


ink to gold

by nasri



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Soviet Union, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4730708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasri/pseuds/nasri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fili, with his crown of golden hair and his Tsarist blue eyes, bleeds a darker red than Marx himself. He runs the Lubyanka from a windowless office, ruthless and swift. Rumour has it for every warrant he signs, Kili stands in the very centre of the firing squad, rifle raised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I realise that between the rampant incest and nods to Soviet-era politics this will appeal to all of three people, but I couldn't help myself.

Ori runs shaking finger tips over the edge of his brother’s file. It is thin, surprisingly so, only a few loose sheets of paper to account for the whole of Nori’s life’s work. Perhaps, when he sees him again, Ori will lie and say the NKVD had a whole book just for him.  
  
“It’s a little early in the morning to be snooping on traitors, isn’t it?”  
  
Ori drops the folder flat on the desk, his heart catching and pulling at an unsteady rhythm because he knows that voice. Everybody who works in the Lubyanka knows that voice.  
  
Kili is beautiful. He wears his hair slightly longer than regulation generally allows, swept to the side in a toss of loose curls that fall in front of his eyes with annoying frequency. On his own he is striking, but Kili is only part of a set. Ori knows the rumours, whispered in cupped hands between civilians and military men alike. They are called the Princes, though never to their faces as it is equal parts disdain and compliment.  
  
Ori finds his voice as Kili crosses in front of his desk, leaning against it with his hip, his smile deceptively bright for someone still in uniform at four in the morning.  
  
“So you recognise the name?” Ori asks, his voice strained under the weight of his own guilt.  
  
Kili shakes his head. “They’re colour coded. Insurrection Indigo, I believe this one’s called.”  
  
Ori watches him with wide eyes, until Kili finally laughs. “I’m joking, by the way. It was a joke. Though they are colour coded.”  
  
He thinks he should say something, spout an excuse, anything, but just as he opens his mouth Kili waves him off. He hooks a foot around a neighbouring chair, drags it in front of Ori’s desk and collapses back into it. He suddenly looks very tired indeed, and Ori spares a single panicked second to wonder why exactly he is here.  
  
The Durins are one of few noble families to survive the first revolution. Tsarist allies were either massacred or fled, but the Durins did neither. They joined the Bolsheviks before the raids ever began, appropriating swaths of land for military use, and rose in the ranks as generals of the Red Army. Fili and Kili are a product of nobility, just as their uncle once was. Royalty has traded manors for military honours but privilege is privilege no matter what the guise.  
  
“Someone asked you for a favour,” he says. “I get it. Don’t worry. Taking bribes is part of the job.” He waves his hand imperiously around the empty room. “Welcome to the Lubyanka, you’ve officially made it.”  
  
“I’m an accountant,” he says and Kili laughs with his head thrown back.  
  
“Yeah, I kind of gathered that. Look, I’m not trying to interrogate you. To be totally honest I was just surprised to see a new face lurking around at this time. Look through your files, it doesn’t matter at all to me.”  
  
“Can I help with anything?” He asks cautiously, as Kili doesn’t appear to be leaving.  
  
“No,” he says. But this gets him out of the chair, brushing chalky dust from his trousers. “Enjoy your secrets, Mister-“  
  
“Ori- just Ori’s fine.”  
  
He smiles like it belongs to him. “Ori. It was nice to meet you.”  
  
When the sound of his footsteps finally fades into the distance, Ori’s shoulders sag, inch by inch, until his forehead is resting against the table. His uneven heartbeat has slowed, leaving nausea in its wake. He should be thanking every bright, shining star in the God forsaken Moscow sky that it was Kili who found him and not his brother.  
  
The Princes were always bound for positions of influence, one way or another. For all the incompetence born to power, Fili and Kili stand in stunning contrast. Fili, with his crown of golden hair and his Tsarist blue eyes, bleeds a darker red than Marx himself. He runs the Lubyanka from a windowless office, ruthless and swift. Rumour has it for every death warrant he signs, Kili stands in the very centre of the firing squad, rifle raised.  
  
Ori has no doubt that if Fili had found him, his life would be forfeit. With one last glance behind him, he opens Nori’s file.  
  
—  
  
“Don’t ever mention your brother,” Dori says as he cuts squares of muslin to sew into quilted pieces. “You mustn’t let on that you’re related to a traitor, even if it’s only by half.”  
  
“He’s not a traitor,” Ori snaps. “He’s a revolutionary.”  
  
“Whatever he is, they won’t approve one way or another. And we need the support of the chekists if we wish to survive the winter.”  
  
“We wouldn’t have to worry about surviving if it weren’t for the chekists.” He tries his best to ignore the badge that sits firmly in his pocket, branding him with the very same label.  
   
“You don’t remember how it was before, Ori, but I do.” Dori’s usual superior tone has taken on a distinctly self-righteous pitch, but he doesn’t dare interrupt. “Peasants would hang for farming too close to invisible borders, not even the military had enough to eat. There was no way out before the Union. But look at us now, Ori. Look at you.”  
  
He wants to snap and shout and break everything in their God forsaken government subsidised flat because they may be better off manipulating the numbers of Soviet redistribution, but Nori is not. He wants to remind him, to describe the many horrors he’s heard from agents who worked a single shift along the Siberian Railway. But as Dori turns to stir a pot of boiled cabbage, Ori holds his tongue.  
  
He wants to remind him of the hell their brother must be living, but it’s unlikely Dori ever forgets it. Ori certainly doesn’t, not for a single moment.  
  
—  
  
He doesn’t have a plan, not really. Getting placed at a desk in the Lubyanka was significantly farther than he ever thought he would get. So instead Ori does what comes naturally, he listens and he waits.  
  
Dori walks home from work on the frost dusted streets at four in the morning when the gas lamps have all burned out, a roll of cloth carried under one arm, slivers of cotton wrapped around his fingers in lieu of gloves. Ori wakes at three and digs wood from the cupboard, lighting a fire with shaking hands to aid the kerosene heaters. By the time Dori makes it through the door, their flat is comfortably warm and the table is set with two bowls of kasha made with boiled water.  
  
They eat in silence, though Dori squeezes his shoulder with icy fingers before sitting down. The sky is still ink black when Ori leaves for work wrapped in Nori’s old coat with a hand knitted scarf of deep purple while Dori returns to bed.  
  
He nods to the guards at the doors, as he does every morning, the first one in at barely half four. The sun won’t rise for hours yet, but Ori will sacrifice both warmth and light for a few peaceful moments to himself. The lamp at his desk shines over pages of figures that make Ori’s stomach roll. Each and every one translates into another person standing in line for rations of grain, which by the looks of it will be late again this month.  
  
“So you’re here at this time even when you’re not snooping?”  
  
Ori’s eyes go wide and his fingers tighten around his pen and it takes every steeled nerve in his body not to flinch. “I like to get my reports done early.”  
  
Kili hums in understanding. Just like last time, he pulls a chair in front of his desk and collapses into it, smiling with wide set teeth. “So you’re in early, not late? Wish I could say the same for me.”  
  
Ori nods and waits and wonders what he’s missing. “What are you working on?” Kili asks, finally. For a moment Ori thinks it might be a test but he looks genuinely interested as he leans forward, elbows resting on his knees.  
  
“Our crop yield for the recent harvests in the bloc territories.”  
  
“And what exactly do you do with that?”  
  
“Maths,” Ori says and Kili laughs, the same shaking shoulders and wide, grinning mouth.  
  
“Well yes I figured as much. But what’s the application? To be honest, I don’t get around to many departments but my own. I’d like to know what it is you do.”  
  
So Ori explains his numbers and his projections and the surplus warehouses outside of Moscow and Kili remains engaged, asks all the right questions, and for the briefest of moments Ori almost forgets he’s talking to a Durin.  
  
—  
  
It becomes something of a pattern. Once or twice a week, in the quiet hours before dawn, Kili will commandeer a chair, half of his desk, and an hour of his time.  
  
At first he prefers to listen, fearing the secrets that would pour from his lips into the clumsy morning air. But Kili pulls stories from him just as easily as he tells his own. Soon, Ori is reminiscing over his childhood haunts in the outer districts, laughing over clumsy teenage mishaps and the department’s fresh blooded recruits. In return, Kili gossips about the sons and daughters of generals with wide, mischievous eyes. They discuss Energiya and their satellite mockups, reminisce over kasha made with heavy, thick cream.  
  
He is nothing of the shadow that he is rumoured to be and by November Ori begins to consider him a friend even if their relationship is bound to the gaslight of the morning.  
  
It is nearing noon and the sun is harsh and bright against the frosted pavement when a runner with slicked black hair offers him a folded note on thick parchment. “It’s from Kili Durin.” Ranks are frowned upon in the Red Army, but Ori can tell he feels uncomfortable speaking his name.  
  
“Thank you,” he says, accepting the letter as every staff member in his general vicinity watches with hungry eyes.  
  
_I’m starving. Meet me outside the east exit._  
  
He folds the paper into squares and tucks it into his pocket before gathering his coat and battered briefcase and heading for the door. After all, who is he to refuse the call of royalty?  
  
—  
  
Kili is an expert in the art of eating out. He knows every specialty restaurant, which corner cafes sell the best coffee, butchers with the freshest meats.  
  
It is raining when he brings him to a cramped building with painted windows, situated along the bank. Kili creeps through rows of battered, mismatched tables, and peaks his head through the serving window.  
  
“Mama,” he calls. “I’ve brought you a new regular.”  
  
An elderly woman emerges from the kitchen with thick frown lines and dark eyes. She lights up at the sight of Kili, pulling him down to her level and kissing both cheeks. “Oh I’ve missed you,” she says. “You’ve been away for too long.”  
  
She turns to Ori and promptly kisses him to match. “And you are?”  
  
“Ori,” he manages. She thumps him on the back with surprising strength.  
  
“I know what you need,” she says. “You need some pelmeni.”  
  
Ori meets Kili’s eye over her shoulder as she shuffles back into the kitchen. “It’s best to just eat what she put in front of you,” he says. “Trust me, she’s always right.”  
  
—  
  
His desk mate is a confident young man with sharp features, the son of a famous author who was born without a head for words. They rarely speak beyond smiles and ‘good evenings’ but Ori enjoys his constant presence all the same. It is nearing Christmas when he stops coming to work, a holiday gone unmarked on most calendars.  
  
At first he thinks perhaps he must have fallen ill, so Ori doesn’t ask questions. A week later, his desk is filled by a young woman with long auburn hair and iron hard shoulders, like she’s waiting for an attack that never comes.  
  
“Excuse me?” He asks her, kindly. “Were you just transferred here?”  
  
“Yes.” She does not appear fond of speaking, and Ori thinks that’s just as well.  
  
“Do you happen to know why my old desk mate left?”  
  
Her fingers tighten around her fountain pen. “Fili Durin,” she says, finally. “Why else does anyone disappear?”  
  
—  
  
Kili is laughing, a hysterical sound, doubled over on himself as Ori tells a story involving his unnamed older brother and a pint of spoiled milk spilled over a shop owner in one of the outer districts.  
  
“Fucking genius,” he says, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Ori is smiling, at his reaction if not the memory, when he hears someone say Kili’s name. They both turn and when Kili stands, Ori’s breath catches in his throat and he chokes down whatever he was about to say.  
  
Fili lingers in the doorway with every inch of the military bearing that Kili occasionally lacks, though perhaps it’s because Ori is used to seeing him before dawn, slumped in a chair, worn down and wrinkled. Kili’s expression never changes, if anything his grin widens. threatening to split his features in two.  
  
"You’ve finished early?” He asks, walking towards his brother.  
  
Fili nods, offering a slight quirk of his lips that Kili seems to take as a smile. “Come here, I want to introduce you to someone. Ori, this is my brother Fili. Fee, this is my friend Ori. He works here as an accountant.”  
  
“One of the best, I hear,” Fili says, offering a single gloved hand for him to shake.  
  
“Hardly,” Ori answers, standing. “But thank you all the same.”  
  
Fili turns away. “I only wished to see where you’d wandered off to,” he says to Kili. “I’m happy to leave you both alone.”  
  
“No,” Kili begins, reaching for his arm but stopping short of the fabric of his uniform. “I’ve taken up enough of Ori’s time. I’m ready to go home.” They exchange a glance between them before Fili heads for the door, pausing only to say, “It was nice to meet you.”  
  
“He’s gone to collect his things,” Kili says, returning the chair to the neighbouring desk. “That’s my cue to see myself out. Same time tomorrow?” He asks.  
  
Ori nods, fighting back an unnamed, unshakable sense of dread. “Yeah, of course. Same time tomorrow. Good night, Kili,” he says.  
  
“Good morning, Ori.”  
  
—  
  
They sip mushroom solyanka from tin spoons, warming Ori’s numb fingers.  
  
“My aunt used to say that you should never eat soup alone,” Kili says. It’s the first time he has mentioned his family at all, save for references to Fili and their many adventures around abandoned and repurposed palaces. It’s a sweet saying, but Ori eats alone most nights, and tells Kili so.  
  
“What?” He asks, appalled.  
  
“Well Dori works the night shifts at the tailor, so we eat breakfast together, well, my breakfast anyway, his dinner. But otherwise I’m home alone.” Kili tilts his head, and Ori is afraid for a single moment that maybe he’s worked out a missing brother in the equation of his family. He is not as careful with his words as he ought to be.  
  
Instead, he says, “Well then you’re coming for dinner next week.”  
  
“Coming where?”  
  
“To my flat, mine and Fili’s. We’d love to have you.” Ori’s trepidation must show on his face because Kili laughs, adding, “He’s not as bad as you think. If charm is genetic, I just happened to take the lot, that’s all.”  
  
Kili is either hopelessly naive or he knows he’s lying through his teeth. “Sure,” Ori says. “I’d love to.”  
  
—  
  
Ori doesn’t know exactly where it is they’re headed, but he can guess. Most people call it the House on the Embankment, but Ori always thought it a bit of a mouthful. It is meant to be as awe inspiring as the people who reside there, but he just sees a factory, an apartment building that scars the river with its reflection.  
  
As if to agree, Kili says, “The House isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean it’s two decades old now. Besides, it’s just a way for Stalin to keep all of his eggs in one basket, should he ever need to set the basket alight.”  
  
Ori makes a noncommittal noise and reserves judgement until Kili is leading him through a brightly lit lobby to a row of wooden framed elevators. “It’s coded,” he says, pressing the round number seven. “All you’ll find on this floor is aristocracy turned Bolsheviks, plus some old money.”  
  
“You were never an aristocrat,” he points out, though perhaps weeks ago he wouldn’t have said a word.  
  
“No,” Kili agrees, stepping into the hallway. “But status is hereditary, just like everything else.” He pauses before a heavy, wooden door and digs through his pockets for a key. “Don’t worry,” he says as Ori hesitates in the doorway. “Fili won’t bite.”  
  
The flat smells of fish and garlic and something he can’t quite place. “You have a cook?” He asks.  
  
“A cook that doubles as a brother.” Kili flashes him a wide grin as he removes his shoes before stepping through the entryway. The sitting room is beautiful, with shining parquet floors and heavy oak furniture, a far cry from the homes Ori is used to seeing. He quickly over looks the ornate, carved furniture in favour of the books.  
  
“Oh,” he says, gazing at one of many bookcases that line the pale walls.  
  
“Fili calls it my library.”  
  
“And it extends into the bedrooms and kitchen as well, I assure you.” Fili stands in the doorway, still in his uniform, but there is slightly less iron to his posture now.  
  
“You’re hardly one to complain,” he says and they exchange a small, nearly identical smile. For the first time, Ori sees the resemblance between them but it is gone the second Fili turns back towards the kitchen.  
  
“Welcome to our home, by the way,” Fili calls over his shoulder.  
  
“Just wait until you try his dumplings,” Kili adds, pulling him into the kitchen by the crook of his elbow. “Come on, he’s just taken the first batch out of the pot.”  
  
—  
  
Kili sends him home with a small collection of books, more variety than he’s received since he was in school. He waves off his whispered thanks with a quick, “Well I’ve already read them all and Lord knows Fili won’t pick up anything short of an efficiency report so keep them, honestly. And then come back for more.”  
  
And so he does. Every Thursday evening Kili drives him to the House and leads him through the lobby. Fili cooks dinner but rarely speaks more than greetings, retreating to one of the bedrooms by the time Kili cracks open a bottle of vodka for them both to share. He always returns home full and warm and slightly tipsy, armed with a book or two and hearty conversation.  
  
It is nearly February when Ori is given a note at his desk, with Kili’s familiar scrawl instructing him to take a cab to the House for dinner with a promise of reimbursement. And so he does, though the driver refuses to accept any money at all after dropping him off at the front entrance.  
  
“It’s quite alright,” he says, and Ori wonders if this is policy, unspoken but secured. He keeps his head down as he walks the familiar path to the elevator doors and then across the hall to Kili’s flat.  
  
Ori raises his hand to knock, but pauses just before he hits the wood. He can hear shouting, an unfamiliar voice that levels off at a snarl, followed by Fili, uncharacteristically loud and aggressive in the background. Realising this is most definitely none of his business, he turns to leave just as the door swings open and General Thorin himself storms out.  
  
He pauses in front of Ori, staring down at him with narrowed eyes. “What are you doing lingering outside my nephews’ door?”  
  
“I’m - ” his voice catches in his throat. Thorin is significantly more imposing in person than in the portrait that hangs in the Kremlin. “I have a report from the NKVD,” he says, finally.  
  
Thorin appears momentarily unconvinced, looking him up and down as if memorising every line and crease in his sweater before finally he steps back through the door. “Fili,” he calls. “You have a visitor.”  
  
Thorin sweeps past him with a wave of his black trench coat, leaving the door open. Fili and Kili are standing in the living room, looking no less professional than they do in the capital, wearing military honours pinned above their hearts. The only difference is Kili’s hand on his brother’s shoulder and the calm cordiality of Fili’s voice which has been replaced with something akin to fire.  
  
“Ori,” Kili says, letting go. They exchange glances, a hidden dialect punctuated by Fili’s fingers brushing the inside of his wrist and Kili’s shifting frown. Fili nods and turns towards the bedroom door, shutting it behind him with a nearly inaudible click of the lock falling into place.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Kili says, walking past him to shut the front door. “I know I promised dinner but we didn’t exactly expect Thorin to come by.”  
  
“Is everything alright?” He asks. Kili is digging into the drinks cabinet, pulling out corked vodka and pouring two glasses before taking a drink for himself directly from the bottle.  
  
He hands one glass to Ori and sits sprawled across the chaise, motioning for him to join. “It’s fine. Mostly. It’s just, Thorin doesn’t agree with us on a lot of things.”  
  
“Political things?” He asks, curious. The vodka is smooth and warm and burns his chest.  
  
“Among others.” He knows that this is all the information he is going to get, so Ori changes the subject. Instead he tells stories of the recent testing exercises their recruits were subject to in an attempt to get Kili to laugh again.  
  
He is successful, though he almost always is.  
  
—  
  
Their shared breakfasts are usually silent, both too tired to speak. But today, Dori pauses just before his spoon reaches his mouth and says, “I was told a rather interesting story.”  
  
“Oh?” Ori isn’t quite sure what to expect, so he takes a large bite while waiting for Dori to continue.  
  
“Apparently, my little brother is inseparable from the youngest Durin, has been for some time. You’ve been seen together in restaurants we cannot afford, in taverns. Weekly invites to the House on the Embankment.” His voice remains airy but Ori knows anger when he hears it.     
  
“It isn’t - ” He begins, fumbling for an explanation, but Dori cuts him off.  
  
“Are you using him?” Dori asks. “Are you using him to bring Nori home?”  
  
“No,” he says. It is immediate and firm. He has come close so many times, when Kili sits across from him, pleasantly drunk and picking at the threads on his uniform, he’s almost told him everything. But in the end he never speaks of it. He doesn’t tell him how Nori flung open the bedroom door, pulled Ori into his arms and whispered into his ear how sorry he was before two chekists dragged him away. One struck him hard across the head with his pistol until there was blood in his hair and Ori screamed for them to stop.    
  
He has almost told Kili every detail of that day, repeated infinitely on a reel behind his closed eyelids, but something has always held his tongue firm.  
  
“We’re friends,” he continues. “I never meant for it to happen. He found me.”  
  
“Do you plan on asking him for help?”  
  
“Maybe,” Ori says. “If the time is ever right.”  
  
“Stay out of this, Ori,” he warns him. “Your brother knew what he was risking. He gambled and he lost. Leave it be.”  
  
—  
  
“Do you know what they say about you?”  
  
Kili smiles around the rim of his glass and Ori thinks it’s likely an indulgent one. Alcohol has warmed the mid-winter chill and dampened the persistent background chatter in the pub and Ori no longer feels like being subtle.  
  
“You’ll have to be more specific.”  
  
“Your nicknames,” he says. It’s a department wide curiosity, whether or not the higher-ups know how they’re referred to in the ranks.  
  
“Princes,” Kili shrugs. “Honestly it’s not bad. We all call Zhukov “mustache” and he doesn’t even have one.” Kili is a worryingly functional drunk, or perhaps Ori has just had more than he thought.  
  
“And what about the rest of it?” He asks.  
  
Kili sets down his drink. “I couldn’t even go about listing half the accusations that have come my way.”  
  
In all honesty, neither can Ori. Once he heard whispers of a secret language, a dialect only spoken by Durins that allows messages to be sent from uncle to nephews, a retired general running the entirety of the Lubyanka through coded letters. Most are expected; accusations of Tsarist sympathies, plots to overthrow the politburo, brothers primed to share a dictatorship. Sometimes, Ori hears particularly vicious questions about two eligible bachelors, living on their own, sharing a flat, or perhaps sharing a bed.  
  
“I know it all,” Kili says with a wave of his hand. “And I suppose the more rumours you have to your name the more influence you command. Then again,” he takes a sip. “The more influence you have, the more likely it is you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of a purge.”  
  
“That’s one way to look at it,” Ori says.  
  
Kili tips head head back towards the ceiling. “It’s the only way.”  
  
—  
  
Ori doesn’t quite remember a time when a knock at the door didn’t inspire immediate fear in the depths of his chest, but now that fear has turned to paranoia. Though at close to midnight, while Ori halfheartedly cleans their flat by kerosene lamps to save on electricity, he thinks he might have good reason. He pauses, a rag clutched tightly in his hand, and hopes whoever it is will go away.  
  
They don’t. He tucks his cleaning supplies into the nearest alcove and makes for the entrance way, praying for a mistake. When he opens the door, it isn’t a chekist waiting for him, instead it’s Kili, half-drunk with an unopened bottle of vodka held loosely in his fingers.  
  
“Kili,” he breathes his name like a sigh of relief and all but ushers him inside. This is a line they haven’t quite crossed. Ori has never been ashamed of the life his brothers have built for themselves, but he knows how Kili lives and he can see his flat for what it is. It is dusty and shabby, with scraps of cloth abandoned across nearly every flat surface, cracks in the walls and black mould lining the ceiling but it is home and this was bound to happen eventually.  
  
The one beautiful thing in their apartment is a settee, a relic from a long abandoned estate, given to Dori to practice upholstery. Years ago, it would have hardly been spared a glance, but now it shines patterned baby blue and silver, like true royalty. Ori is always careful around it, wiping it down with a light touch at least once a week, keeping it away from damp walls or direct sunlight. Kili collapses back onto the settee without a thought and Ori can’t bring himself to hold it against him.  
  
“So,” he says, sitting beside him, holding glasses for them both.  
  
Kili smiles, uncorking the bottle and pouring far too much for each of them. “Uncle and Fili are fighting again. I didn’t wish to hang around. Plus I had vodka and who better to share it with? Cheers.”  
  
Ori answers him by clinking their glasses together. “Is everything alright?”  
  
Kili snorts into his drink, flourishing his hand in the air. “Oh, everything’s fine. I find it best to let them go at it at least once a week. They’re so alike, I imagine it’s a bit like arguing in a mirror for an hour. I just wish they’d keep it in the office instead of taking up space in our flat.”  
  
“What do they argue about?” He asks, as Kili shrugs off his coat.  
  
He can see him rolling in his heavy tongue, editing his answer before it comes out his mouth. “He’s from a different era, you know. Sometimes we think things should be run a certain way, but for Thorin the Union is in constant peril. He fears revolution.” Kili sips at his drink, his expression bordering on pensive as he gives his answer to the opposite wall. “He thinks you’ve got to keep people in place to ensure stability, he’s forgotten that food, not fear, is generally enough to pacify the masses.”  
  
Ori isn’t sure what to say, though he’s certain Kili has only told the partial truth, so instead he hums into his glass. “You agree, but only Fili argues?”  
  
“Fili’s in a better position to,” Kili admits. “And I have better things to do than rage against a cement wall, if we’re going to be perfectly honest. We will change nothing in the time we’re here, the dice will fall where they may.”  
  
For a single, fiery moment, Ori respects Fili and his inability to let go of what he feels is right, his constant, futile battles with his uncle. That moment is gone with his next sip of vodka, as Kili pushes away thoughts of family politics and speaks instead of a cafe he found that serves syrniki with honeyed apples.  
  
—  
  
He tries to avoid asking questions about Fili but it’s a difficult task to manage. He has an image, built from public gossip and the dark halls of the Red Square, of a man with few inhibitions or joys, someone ruthless and perhaps a little damaged to manage all that he does. But the man he sees in Kili’s kitchen every Thursday is someone quiet and soft-spoken and he looks at his brother like he would lay down Stalin himself at his feet. Ori has questions, dozens of them, but he’ll only voice them in fractions.  
  
“Your brother really doesn’t read?” He asks, as he flips through the pages of the book Kili lent to him that morning with a whispered, “You absolutely must finish this before Thursday so I can finally have someone to discuss it with.”  
  
“He reads,” Kili says. “He certainly used to, when we were younger. He would read to me every night. But now he hardly has the time. My work is pretty clean cut, it rarely follows me home, but Fili always has another thing to look over.”  
  
“What does he do then, in his free time?”  
  
Kili shrugs. “What everyone does.” And he knows he’s reached his unspoken limit for the afternoon. Kili shares few of his brother’s secrets, he keeps them close to his chest and Ori can only pull so far.  
  
—  
  
Ori reads and rereads until his eyes water. It is a budget proposal, one of hundreds that pass his desk every week. Food supplies are low, crops were decimated in bloc nations by early frosts and dry summers, and the differences must be made up somewhere.  
  
Many of the gulags in the North are a drain on resources. Not all, but many. He scans down a list of names, though he knows what’s there, he’s read it a dozen times already. Kolyma, the subarctic hell that his brother was banished to, is one of many that will begin a phase out of prisoners. The document is vague, listing nothing but the dwindling rations that will be sent to each camp.  
  
Ori knows exactly what this means and according to the signature scrawled across the margin in black ink, the request was already approved. Nori’s odds of survival are being slashed where he sits, so Ori shoves the document into his bag, reaches for his coat, and heads for the House on the Embankment.  
  
He is thankful at least for his weekly visits to Kili’s flat, as he wastes no time weaving in and out of the labyrinth of hallways, each a perfect replica of the last, until he arrives at their door. He knocks with the heel of his fist, glancing briefly around as he does so, hoping not to run into any chekists. He cannot risk being asked to empty his bag, and chances are the brothers are asleep, taking rest where they can find it. So Ori rattles the knob, sighing in relief when he finds it unlocked. He closes the door behind him with a soft click and looks around the empty sitting room.  
  
“Kili,” he calls, and for a moment he thinks they may not be home after all, but then he hears a sound, like a shift of fabric from down the hall. He hopes that it is Kili waking up and not his brother. Ori walks quietly, a skill he perfected after years of tiptoeing around their flat in the afternoons while Dori slept, and pauses just outside an open bedroom door.  
  
Kili is balanced on his brother’s thighs, his back arched, hair sticking to his neck as he moves in perfect, gasping rhythm. They are silent, both of them, not a sound beyond the whispers of their breathing. Fili’s fingers brush his lower back, tracing his spine, and Kili falls forward, his face buried in Fili’s neck, his body still moving to the sound of a metronome that only they can hear.    
  
It is then, with Kili flat against his chest, that Fili finally sees him. Their eyes meet over his shoulder and Ori pulls back in an abrupt, half startled movement. Fili doesn’t look away, instead he wraps a fistful of Kili’s black hair around his fingers and pulls hard. Kili gasps, a strangled sound, and his shoulders roll back as Fili soothes him with an open mouthed kiss to the inside of his neck.  
  
Fili no longer lies still. He moves his hips, grinding upwards, making Kili’s arms tremor and shake as he presses into the bed, keeping himself balanced as best he can while meeting his brother’s every thrust.  
  
Fili keeps his lips to his pulse point, smiling against Kili’s skin, and Ori all but runs back down the hall. He hears a strangled cry from the bedroom, Kili’s voice a glorious, wrecked thing, just as he closes the door behind him.  
  
—  
  
Ori’s hands don’t shake. He carries Nori’s file, tucked in a repurposed folder, and searches for Fili’s swath of blonde hair among the many hats and scarves of the cafe. It doesn’t seem like a place he would frequent, but then again he imagines that is the point. He finds him in the back, hands cupped around a dented tin mug. Fili nods in greeting as Ori takes a seat across from him.  
  
“Something to drink?”  
  
Ori shakes his head, doubting he could stomach anything heavier than water. “No, thank you.”  
  
“So,” he begins, spinning the mug in his fingers, making an irritating scraping sound against the table. “What is it you’re asking for?”  
  
He pushes the file across to him, and Fili opens it without a second of hesitation. He reads for a moment, eyes scanning the page, and Ori’s blood rushes with adrenaline panic.  
  
“Your brother?” He asks softly.  
  
He nods. The answer Kili would never think to guess. “I know about the cuts. I want him freed.”  
  
“Relocated,” Fili offers. “In west Siberia we have a camp for skilled workers, electricians and the like. I’ll have him apprentice for the rest of his sentence, safety guaranteed.”  
  
Ori tries to picture his brother’s face, the crooked line of his teeth, the way he would laugh at Dori’s incessant worrying, how his fingers would unfurl around the gifts he stole, presented like an offering. “No,” he says. “I want him released.”  
  
“Two years early?” Fili tilts his head. “That is a heavy request.”    
  
“How much is your brother worth to you?” He asks, his voice surprisingly steady.  
  
“Rumours are only rumours.”  
  
“Not when confirmed by his only friend.” He knows Kili’s beautiful energy, his half-drunk visits and hysterical laughter will be a hefty price, but for Nori he is willing to pay it. Fili looks like he might be considering him so Ori adds, “What would you do, if it were Kili?” He knows the answer, they both do, Fili doesn’t need to breathe a word of confirmation.  
  
“Released,” he agrees. “I’ll have him sent home based on new information suggesting he was not working for the seditionists after all.”  
  
Ori doesn’t thank him. Instead he nods once as Fili stands, pushing back his chair. He taps his fingers on the table, an after thought.  
  
“Don’t tell Kili,” he says, and for the first time Ori looks him in the eye. “He’s fond of you,” he explains with a distant, mask of a smile. “I don’t mind politics among acquaintances but Kili always rather wished for friends like the steel workers have. Relationships without strategy. You’re as close as he’s ever gotten and I won’t see him disappointed.”  
  
—  
  
Kili is flipping a small knife around and around in his fingers while he leans back in his chair, his feet kicked up onto the desk. It is shining, pure brass, curved like a Persian blade with engravings cut in unfamiliar patterns.  
  
“That’s beautiful,” Ori says.  
  
“It’s Fili’s.” He holds it tightly in his hand, grasping the flat, metal handle. “It belonged to our grandfather.” It looks overly lavish, decorative, and he can’t help but wonder if Fili has ever used it.  
  
“More than an heirloom,” Kili says, as if he can read it on him. “I had it sharpened. That’s why I have it. He always forgets and it has to be taken to a brass worker. You can’t do it yourself.”  
  
“Are you alright?” He asks. It’s paranoia, he knows it is, but he asks all the same.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He balances the end of the blade on his thumb. “Fili’s acting odd.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Kili says, frowning. “But I can feel it.” Ori doesn’t pretend to understand and Kili doesn’t elaborate.  
  
“I’m craving cabbage rolls,” he says rather suddenly, pocketing the knife and standing. “Shall we?”  
  
—  
  
Ori should have known better than to drink on an empty stomach. In fact, he should have known better than to drink anything Gloin offered him. His vodka is homemade and grain based, unlike the starchy drinks the pubs sell, and it sits in Ori’s stomach like battery acid.  
  
“I am remarkably drunk,” he confides in Kili, earning a laugh for his efforts.  
  
“Let’s go. How about you stay the night?”  
  
Ori shakes his head, an instant, gut reaction. “No,” he says quickly, the thought of facing Fili again makes his stomach turn. “I should be home before Dori gets in or he’ll worry.”  
  
“Then I’ll drive you, come on.”  
  
Kili swerves slightly on the cobblestone roads, but manages to get them both to the outskirts with no incidents to speak of. Ori hesitates before reaching for the rusted metal door handle, his head swimming.  
  
“Would you say no to some of Dori’s kvass?” It’s no longer sweetened with berries and apples like it was when they were children, instead he uses the whole of their sugar ration and lemon juice when they can manage.  
  
“I thought you’d never ask,” Kili says with a grin. “Come on then.”  
  
His flat is perhaps a few degrees colder than it is outside, at least it feels that way. Kili doesn’t say anything, though he doesn’t take off his gloves, either. They light the heaters with clumsy hands and Ori boils enough kvass to split between them. When they’re finally tucked beneath knitted afghans on the hearth, Kili hums the tune to a pub song, one usually associated with filthy lyrics about taking a maiden for the first time before a roaring fire.  
  
Ori snorts into his drink. “You’re an idiot,” he says.  
  
“And yet here I am, on your floor, enjoying your brother’s home brew. Best I’ve ever had, by the way. Thorin is shit at things like this. We only got kvass as kids from street vendors.”  
  
“I’ll be sure to lend you Dori sometime,” he offers. “Everyone’s stand in mother.”  
  
Kili smiles as he looks up at the faded spines of books lining the mantle. “You had another brother, right?” He asks softly.  
  
Ori nods, and Kili continues, “What happened to him?” He’s been holding onto this question for a while now, Ori can see it in his knit eyebrows and chewed lip.  
  
“He was sent to a gulag,” he says, “Almost three years ago, for crimes against the Union. Conspiracy and sedition.”  
  
Kili’s head snaps to the side, watching him with wide, red rimmed eyes. “You never told me,” Kili whispers.  
  
“How could I?” Kili spends his afternoons locked in interrogation rooms, black bagged prisoners with wires held to their skin. And when he takes the time to think about it, Ori hates every inch of the NKVD and what they have done to his brother. What he doesn’t think about is that Kili could be the cause of every scar along Nori’s skin, that Fili’s signature could grace his arrest warrant.    
  
“I can help, I’ll speak to Fili, we’ll - ”  
  
“There’s no need,” Ori says, pressing a hand to his forearm. “He’s served his sentence. He’s coming home.”    
  
“I wish you’d told me earlier, when we first met. He could’ve been here with you, by now.” Kili says. Ori raises an eyebrow, and Kili looks away, his meaning clear even through the haze of alcohol. “I don’t like this job you know.”  
  
Ori wants to believe it, he really does, but Kili has chosen to be an interrogator. He is extremely popular within the Red Army. He has friends, and more importantly, family in very high places indeed and yet still he lingers in the basements of the Lubyanka.  
  
“Don’t you think,” Kili begins, his voice soft. “That it’s better for someone like me to have this job, instead of someone who enjoys it?”  
  
“Like Fili?” He asks, before he can stop himself.  
  
“My brother isn’t cruel, and nor am I. We’re just - ” he pauses.  
  
“Playing your hand?” Ori offers. “It’s fine, Kili. Really, it is. Nori is coming home and that’s all that matters.”  
  
—  
  
At first, he doesn’t recognise him. His flaming red hair, Nori’s trademark, his anti-Soviet genetic statement, is dull, almost brown, overgrown and thinned with a beard to match. Everything is sunken and dark. His left ear has been ravaged by frost bite, with a large chunk missing from the cartilage, and the rest blistered white and cracking.  
  
“Oh,” he whispers, because when Nori’s mouth breaks into a grin it is like a dream.  
  
“Will you let me in?” He asks. Nori’s voice is broken, a byproduct of scarred lungs and strangle holds. “I haven’t felt at home in a long time.”  
  
Ori stumbles backwards as Nori shuts the door behind him, and he cannot help the sharp gasp of breath as Nori drops his bag to the floor and reaches out for him.    
  
“I always knew you’d save my life, little brother.” Ori can’t blink back his tears but he manages to keep his sobs at bay, even when Nori raises a shaking, skeletal hand to his hair, parting it with his fingers like he used to do before sending Ori to school as a child.  
  
“I love you,” he says, his voice muffled. “I never told you when I was little. I told you I hated you often enough, and then - ” he cannot finish the thought that has haunted him since Nori’s arrest.  
  
“You never needed to say it.” He is the one doing the comforting, even now, as Ori turns into his shoulder. “Christ, kiddo. Dori never even needed to say it. We took enough beatings from him and I’ve always known he loved us both more than sunlight.”  
  
“Welcome home,” he whispers, as tears trace their way down the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Not quite,” he says into his hair. “We’re still missing someone.”  
  
When Dori returns in the early hours of the morning, Nori is already clean shaven, a careful job by Ori’s hand as he couldn’t handle the blade with his stiff, poorly healed fingers. He looks like a shadow of his brother and this perhaps is even more unsettling than the man who appeared on his doorstep, unrecognisable.  
  
But Dori doesn’t pause, doesn’t wait to take in the differences. He drops his fabric to the ground and flings his arms around Nori’s neck. It is a surprise to them both when Nori finally hugs him back.  
  
—  
  
Ori wants nothing more than to take the day off, to stay with his brothers while the sun rises and until it sets, but he knows it’s not an option. So instead he leaves them tucked into the same bed, asleep with their backs to the headboard with an inch of space between them, and heads for the Lubyanka.  
  
Kili is already at his desk when he arrives, his feet propped up, Ori’s latest report open in his hands. His cheeky grin falls from his face the instant Ori steps through the door.  
  
“Oh,” he whispers, standing. “What happened?”  
  
Ori only shakes his head, unable to speak. He has three years worth of grief trapped in his throat, blocking his airway. He can’t help the choked sound he makes as Kili hugs him, wrapping his arms tightly around his shoulders. Kili’s hands are warm against his skin and Ori cries like he hasn’t since he was a child. He cries for his brother and his ruined voice and the years they’ve lost between them. He cries and Kili lets him.  
  
—  
  
The next time Ori walks in on them, it is to deep, open mouthed kisses, Kili chasing his brother’s lips as he pulls away. They are in Kili’s office, sparse and Spartan, leaning against the wall behind his desk. Kili’s shirt is untucked and Fili’s hands are flat against his bare skin as they fumble with belt buckles and copper buttons.  
  
“Really?” He hisses, closing the door behind him. “Are you completely stupid? The door wasn’t even locked. I could have been anyone.”  
  
Kili leaps away from Fili’s fingers like they’re white hot, and turns to Ori with a look of absolute horror on his face.  
  
“Kee,” Fili says softly, reaching for his arm. “It’s alright, he knows.”  
  
“What?” He snaps, facing Fili, his ears blushing red. It’s almost endearing. “What?” He repeats, his tone slightly more hysterical as he turns to Ori.  
  
“I’ve walked in on you once before,” he admits. “Which just goes to show how badly you two need to learn how to lock doors.”  
  
Kili sinks back against the edge of his desk, eyes trained on the floor. “You absolute bastards. Neither of you told me?” Fili and Ori exchange a single, guilty glance over Kili’s shoulder.  
  
“Well then,” he says, and fists his hand in the front of Fili’s uniform, shoving him back against the wall with a crack. He pulls his brother into a filthy kiss, tongues sliding through parted lips, his hands tangled in his hair. When he finally pulls away, he digs his teeth into Fili’s bottom lip, tugging only slightly, before letting go again.  
  
“Uh - ” Ori manages, reaching for the door.  
  
“Well now that I know what I can get away with,” Kili says, viciously palming Fili through the front of his trousers.  
  
Ori does his absolute best to keep his eyes locked on the wall opposite him, but Kili is slowly wearing him down. “That’s really not what I was - ”  
  
“Kili, you could be the daughter of a general and I still wouldn’t be keen on public displays of affection,” Fili says, far too calm for someone being ravished by Kili’s nimble fingers.  
   
“It’s not public,” Kili points out. “It’s Ori, who apparently knows every detail about our relationship, anyway.”  
  
“Not every detail,” he says. “Just that it exists. And really that’s all I’d like to know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you two alone. Though I suggest you lock the door once I’m gone.”  
  
“Wait,” Kili calls, pulling away from Fili. “Why did you come to see me?”  
  
“It’s not important,” Ori says and shuts the door behind him.  
  
—  
  
Nori stays for a month. It is a month of crowded sitting rooms and reminiscing over bowls of barley soup. A month in which Ori never eats alone.  
  
“I gave the tenant notice,” Nori says. “I think she was surprised to see I’d survived.”  
  
Ori fiddles with the spine of one of Kili’s many books. “So you’re moving back in?” It’s a small house far from the centre of Moscow. It isn’t wired for electricity like the apartments are, and the roof leaks in the spring, but it is the only thing Nori has left of his father and Ori always knew he would return to it.  
  
“I’ll be around more often than not,” Nori assures him. “I could do without Dori’s company but I love his cooking.”  
  
Ori pretends not to notice as Nori’s clothes cover less and less of the furniture, or when his boots no longer lay strewn across the entryway. The suburbs, he reminds himself, are a far cry from Siberia.  
  
When he returns home from work in the evening, the sun still bright above the towering apartments, it is to Nori and his apologetic shrug as he sets out street food along the table.  
  
“Bad luck to eat alone,” Nori says through a mouthful of dumplings. Ori nods his head in agreement.  
  
—  
  
He simplifies the story to the very best of his ability, condensing it into a sentence and a half before his tongue can get carried away from him. “I got a report about the cuts and I went to your flat to ask for help and instead I saw you together.” It was never going to be a good conversation for one of their many cafes. So instead they are tucked away in his sitting room, a bottle of cheap wine each.  
  
“I saw an opportunity,” he continues. "To ask Fili for help instead.”  
  
“So you blackmailed him. Did you ask him not to tell me?” Kili doesn’t sound angry, it’s something closer to disappointment.  
  
“No,” Ori begins carefully. “He told me not to say anything and that he wouldn’t either. He didn’t want to upset you.” He doesn’t mention what Fili told him about Kili’s wish for friends, real friends, unrelated to status and political parties, though part of him wants to.  
  
“I know you’re angry with me, but it was my brother, Kili, what else was I to do?”      
  
“I understand why you needed to find help,” he says, still unable to meet his eye, staring instead at the label on his wine bottle. He smiles then, a rare, small thing with hidden teeth. “You know, it’s silly, the real reason I’m upset. I almost don’t wish to tell you.”  
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
Kili shakes his head and his hair moves with him in great swaths of black. “I’m upset because Fili kept this a secret from me. We don’t - I’m sure you can imagine. There’s nothing we haven’t shared. And it’s odd to think that for this long, he knew something I didn’t.”  
  
“I expected him to tell you,” Ori admits. “And I dreaded it.”  
  
“He didn’t,” Kili says, taking a long drink from the bottle. “But that’s not your fault. Don’t apologise,” he says, as Ori opens his mouth to speak. “I guess, after all of this, I should be thanking you.”

Ori tilts his head in question, his lips to the bottle. 

"You kept our secret, your brother's back, and you're still here."

Ori shrugs. "Where else would I be?"

—  
  
Kili lays draped across the chaise, his head in Fili’s lap as he brushes through his tangled curls with the ends of his fingers. Despite their silent understanding, Fili rarely shows any manner of affection towards his brother when Ori is around, preferring to keep his distance. When Fili’s thumb traces the ridge of Kili’s cheek bone Ori knows their news must be bad.  
  
“Stalin is ill,” Kili is speaking to him, but he is staring up at his brother, eyes grazing the shadow of his lashes, the soft skin at his temple.  
  
“How ill?” Ori asks, taking the seat across from them.  
  
“Doctors think he should live a long time if he is given proper care,” Fili answers softly.  
  
“But they could just be saying that to avoid being killed,” Kili adds.  
  
“And what does that mean for us?”  
  
“For you,” Fili begins, twisting loose braids through Kili’s hair, like chains of honeysuckles. “No one knows what a regime change might bring. For us, we enjoy a measure of privilege under Stalin’s control. Without him or an ally in power, it is likely that we will find ourselves out of favour.”  
  
Ori watches as Kili’s shoulders tense, and Fili’s fingers wander down his throat, pausing just below his pulse point. He doesn’t need to elaborate.  
  
—  
  
There is a tension in the air that even shop keepers can read. “Closed early,” Kili sighs, eyeing the sign on the restaurant door.  
  
“I guess that’s dinner in for us. Fili’s not home to cook, so sadly I’ll have to make do with you.” Ori snorts but doesn’t refuse. Their kitchen is generally poorly stocked on weeks like this, but as long as there is rice and a little salt to wash down their vodka, neither of them will mind. The lobby of the House is surprisingly empty, with no one milling about. Even the usual armed guardsmen are limited to the elevators. If Kili notices, he doesn’t say a word.     
  
Kili is cracking open a bottle of vodka and Ori is standing on the settee, examining a high shelf of books when Fili comes through the door with his knife clutched in his hand and his hair in disarray. He kicks it closed, ignoring Kili’s questioning glance, and locks it, bolted shut.  
  
He pulls Kili to his feet, grips him hard by the shoulders and kisses him, deep and open mouthed and after just a moment Ori has to look away. Kili makes a soft sound as they separate and finally Fili appears to find his voice.  
  
“You need to pack,” he says. “Clothes, whatever food we have in the pantry, and some things to barter. The Faberge vases, wrap them and shove them in your extra pair of boots.”  
  
“What’s happening?” Kili asks, reaching for his hands but Fili is already pulling away, throwing open the wardrobe and tugging out long winter coats to toss into a pile. Kili and Ori exchange a single, worried look.  
  
“There’s about to be a big change,” he says. “And we cannot be here for it.” He pauses to glance at Ori. “You’ll be fine,” he assures him. “You’re not a Durin.”  
  
This appears to be enough for Kili. Ori follows him into the bedroom and helps pull clothes and trinkets from the shelves. “No books,” Fili calls. “Nothing of little value or use. And remember your gun. Mine is still in the office.”  
  
Their movements are automatic, quick and efficient due to the numbing effect of shock, and soon half of Kili’s belongings are unceremoniously packed into a military issue canvas bag.  
  
“Kili, take your things and go to the eastern apartments. Find cousin Gloin, he’ll have an envelope for you. Keep it sealed and for fuck’s sake stay away from the police.” He hands Kili a bowler hat and a thick, knit scarf. “Use these, tie your hair up, make sure no one sees you. We’ll meet you at Yaroslavskaya station in an hour, platform four, six doors from the end. Ori’s coming with me.”  
  
“Why?” They ask, in near unison.  
  
“He’s about to do us a very big favour. Come on. We need to leave.”  
  
—  
  
“What’s going on?” Ori asks, half jogging to keep up with Fili’s long, purposed strides.  
  
“Stalin has taken a turn for the worse, in the next few hours Mother Russia will find herself a new dictator, and with his death the Durins will quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the Kremlin.”  
  
“A purge?” Ori asks, frowning as Fili nods in response. “Are we meeting your uncle?”  
  
Fili’s jaw tenses but he never slows. “Thorin is dead. A shot to the temple in the basement of Lefortovo. It was merciful. The rest of us won’t be so lucky.” He tugs Ori around a corner. “Kili will not be so lucky if they catch him. Do you understand?”  
  
Ori nods, a bit shakily, though in truth he doesn’t. “What do I need to do?”  
  
“The easiest thing in the world. There is an empty set of flats above a butcher off of Koptevskiy.” Fili points across the street. He sees nothing but shadows. “Go straight and turn left, it will be hardly twenty meters away. Go inside, find the door marked with a white chalk circle, and ask for the papers for Mister Potmkin.”  
  
“That’s it?”  
  
“That’s it,” Fili says. “They will hand you an envelope, and all you need to do is bring it back here. Then we’ll meet Kili at the station.”  
  
Ori nods once, and turns towards the street but before he can make it another step Fili is whispering his name, followed by a solemn, “Thank you.”  
  
He does his best to smile before leaving Fili in the darkness of the alleyway.  
  
—  
  
When they finally spot Kili in the crowd, he rushes over to Ori’s side, his cheeks flushed, his eyes frantic, and he throws his arms around his shoulders, hugging him like he hasn’t since Nori returned from Siberia.  
  
“We’re leaving,” he says, and Ori’s gulps down a retched sound.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“We’re not coming back.”  
  
Ori nods, looking into his dark rimmed eyes and smiling, knowing full well he will likely never get a chance to do so again. “I will spend every day hoping that you might.”  
  
“We need to move,” Fili says, ushering them both towards a modern looking steam train parked along the tracks. They cross flimsy wooden planks to the fresh painted doors. Kili squeezes his hand and Ori nods in silent understanding before handing him the envelope filled with what appears to be travel papers to get him through Tayshet.  
  
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have much time. You need to go find Gimli,” he says, pushing Kili urgently in the direction of the front carriage. “We need to make sure he’s on board. Check every compartment.” Kili obeys without question, though he spares one last glance back at Ori. As soon as he is out of sight, swallowed into the crowd, Fili turns for the door.  
  
Ori watches, confused, as he leaves his bag tucked along the wall of the train and crosses the wooden paneling back onto the platform. A boy in coal blackened clothing clammers onto the steps and calls for all passengers to board.  
  
“Fili,” Ori shouts, running after him. He doesn’t stop until they are half way down the tracks, Ori tugging on Fili’s arm with increasing desperation. “What are you doing? You’re going to miss it.”  
  
“I was never meant to go,” he says. “There’s one ticket and one set of papers. It was all I could do at such short notice.”  
  
For a moment Ori can’t bring himself to speak, so Fili does it for him. “He’ll live,” he says. “He will think it impossible at first but he will. Besides, there has to be one Durin left for them to crucify.” The whistle blows, echoing above the steady chatter of Russian peasants, the creaking sounds of the engine coming to life. The young boy and three coal shovelers are taking down the bridges along the platform and people onboard begin to wave from open windows.  
  
“He thinks you’re there with him,” Ori whispers and Fili nods.  
  
“It’s crowded,” he says. “They will be miles out before he notices.” There are tears in his eyes but his voice is steady.  
  
“This might be the cruelest thing you’ve ever done,” he tells him, as the train begins to pick up speed.  
  
“I know,” he whispers. “I always was the selfish one.”


	2. Chapter 2

Moscow’s chilly March air is suddenly dagger sharp without Kili around to soften the blow. Fili must feel it too, his hands are bunched in the pockets of his overcoat as they walk in near silence away from the station.  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
Fili pauses, just a slight slip of his stride. “To the Kremlin,” he says.  
  
He pulls Fili to a stop, his fingers fisted in his sleeve. “You’re joking.”  
  
“I have a large family and we’re about to be hunted down, one by one. Handing myself over buys time we don’t-”  
  
“No, no,” he says, cutting him off. “For Kili if nothing else, I’m not letting you just walk into this.”  
  
“They’ll find me eventually. I work for them, I know how this goes.” He tries to pull away but Ori holds strong.  
  
“We’ll go to my brother. He’ll help us get you out. And until then, you can hide there. We have different family names, even if they look for me in order to find Kili, they won’t think to search for Nori. On paper we’re strangers.” Fili remains silent, eyeing the cobblestone streets.  
  
“Isn’t it worth it?” Ori asks. “If there is even a chance you’ll see him again?”  
  
“You realise if they find us, it’s not just me they’ll take.”  
  
“I’m willing to risk it.”  
  
“But will Nori?”  
  
“He hates the Kremlin,” Ori says. “Any enemy of the politburo is a friend of his. I suppose now that includes you.” He desperately hopes it’s the truth.    
  
—  
  
Nori’s eyes go wide the second he sees them on his front steps. He immediately pulls them both inside, latching the door behind him.  
  
“I’ve had runners out looking for you all night,” Nori hisses. The curtains in his sitting room are all pulled shut, furniture is stacked along doorways, ready to form makeshift barricades. “I thought you might be with a Durin and it looks like I was right.”  
  
“We need a place to stay.”  
  
“You have one,” Nori says. “He doesn’t.”  
  
Fili nods in solemn understanding but Ori stops him before he can reach for the door. “Don’t you move. Nori, can we talk?”  
  
They retreat to his bedroom, leaving Fili alone in the entryway. “He needs help.”  
  
“He’s a dead man,” Nori hisses. “They are rounding up Stalin’s inner circle right and left to avoid a coup and let me tell you, it’s working. I’m sorry, but if you can’t find Kili chances are they already have him.”  
  
“Kili’s on the trans-Siberian, with papers for Scotland.”    
  
“Then why didn’t he take his brother with him?”  
  
“Only one of them could go,” he says. “We need documents, Nori. We need to get him out. And until we do that, he needs to stay hidden.”  
  
Nori rubs at his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Do you know what you’re asking of me?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
Nori watches him with narrowed eyes, searching, and Ori refuses to look away. “Are you in love with Kili?”  
  
“No,” he says. “Kili’s my friend and nothing more.” Kili is beautiful and intelligent and kind but Ori’s heart never beat faster at the sight of him, and even with years and years between them he doubts it ever would.  
  
Something in his response gives Nori the answer he was looking for. “Bring him to the cellar. There are mattresses and sheets, as well as wine and canned food. You’ll both need to stay down there most of the time, avoid windows, you absolutely cannot go out. And if anyone comes knocking, we have compartments hollowed out beneath the floorboards. Dori will make your excuses at the Lubyanka.” He pauses. “Are you sure you want this?”  
  
“Positive.”  
  
“Then go,” he says.  
  
—  
  
“Did you love my brother?” Fili asks. His knees are tucked into his chest, his fingers busy tapping a long forgotten lullaby onto the dusty tin flooring. He has a surprising level of fine motor control for the sheer amount of alcohol he has burned through, but Ori humours him.  
  
“Not in the way you mean,” he says. He understands it is a question he will likely never escape. “I won’t insult you by asking the same.”  
  
Fili reaches for a bottle of cheap wine. “Of course I loved him.”  
  
“You don’t need to talk about him like he’s dead, you know. He’s going to be in Vladivostok by next week’s end.”  
  
“He won’t be dead,” Fili agrees. “But I will be. I might as well adopt past tense now.”  
  
Next week does seem almost ambitious, if Ori takes the time to round up the odds. If Fili is found in Nori’s house, he won’t be the only one facing a firing squad. He finds it best not to dwell on possible charges of treason, so instead he asks, “What’s going to keep Kili from just coming home once he reaches the port? How do you even know he’ll get on the boat?”  
  
“Gimli is under strict instructions. For all of Kili’s training, he’d still never best him in a fight. Gimli will make sure he gets to Aberdeen, even if he has to break a leg to do it.” Fili gulps at his wine like water and Ori finds himself out of questions to ask to distract them both. Evidently, so does Fili.  
  
—  
  
After the alcohol wears off and the haze of dusk turns to dawn, they don’t speak. Fili lays with his back to the wall, hidden amongst a pile of old books, flipping page after page until Ori thinks the sound might drive him insane.  
  
He spends most of his time with Nori, playing card games or sitting on the floor of his bedroom, windows blocked, as they try their best to tie together the frayed threads of their years apart. He knows now that Nori suffered from pneumonia, nearly died of it, and that his cellmate was a journalist who wished to write about his experiences if he ever made it out. He didn’t, so Nori writes for him.  
  
Ori tells him about how he met Kili, about Dori’s line of promotions, about the increasingly desperate political landscape that emerged once Stalin had one foot in the grave. He is hungry for current events, updates to fuel his republican fire, and so Ori feeds them to him one state secret at a time.  
  
When Nori isn’t around, he sits and he waits, but Fili never speaks.  
  
—  
  
“Where is he?” Dori’s voice is high pitched and frantic, loud enough to rouse even Fili’s attention. He puts down his book, glancing over at him. Dori soon thunders down the stairs into the cellar and hauls Ori into his arms.  
  
“You stupid boy,” he hisses. “You stupid, stupid boy. I told you to stay away from this.”  
  
Ori is about to answer, to defend his actions if nothing else, but Dori lets him go seconds later, and turns on Fili. “You,” he growls. “You’re the reason my brother is a- a- criminal!”  
  
“Well he’s not quite a criminal,” Fili says, his book still open in his lap. “Not yet, anyway.”  
  
Dori steps closer and Ori reaches for his arm. “Let’s not do this,” he suggests, but Dori’s eyes have not left Fili’s for a second.  
  
“I should turn you in myself.”  
  
“You’re welcome to,” he says. “Though I imagine you ought to discuss it with your brother. This is Nori’s house, after all.” Dori snarls a curse as Fili snaps his book shut, remnants of easy privilege.  
  
“Listen,” he begins. “You were cursed with brothers who have far too much moral fibre than perhaps they ought to. I’m sorry for that, because it only ever leads to suffering. But they’re good men, both of them, they have convictions. They’re going to pay for them one day,” he says, their eyes meeting over Dori’s shoulder. “They will pay dearly, but take some pride in knowing they are making their own choices.”  
  
“My brothers have paid enough,” Dori says.  
  
“I’m sorry, I truly am. But as far as the Union is concerned, it will never be enough.”  
  
—  
  
For the next month their conversations are stilted, but at least now they are speaking. Their short exchanges are limited to literature and Kili’s coloured antics. They rarely stray out of familiar territory. It is a surprise then, when Fili turns to him, kerosene light haloed around his hair, and asks, “What happened to your parents?”  
  
“Well, I don’t know about my father,” he admits. “But my mother died when I was six. Typhus,” he adds, as an afterthought.  
  
“Do you remember her?”  
  
“Small things, sometimes. Like the colour of her hair. I’m not sure what are dreams and what are real memories, but I never knew enough to miss her. Do you remember your parents?”  
  
Fili nods, his hands folded against his chest. “I do,” he says. “Kili didn’t.”  
  
“What do you remember?”  
  
Fili doesn’t answer and after a while Ori begins to think that perhaps he’s crossed a line. Fili reaches over and snuffs out the lantern, rendering him a silhouette against the cellar wall.  
  
“I remember how she used to wake us in the mornings, the apron she wore to cook.” He pauses and Ori listens to his shallow breathing with his eyes closed. “There was a book she would read to us, the same one every night. I don’t remember the story anymore but I remember the voices she used for the characters. The exact pitch, like a snippet of a song. Maybe that’s my clearest memory.”  
  
“We both could have done worse,” Ori says. “With our replacements.”  
  
Fili smiles at that, a halfhearted thing. “I suppose we could have. Thorin wasn’t bred to be a parent. He did well enough, all things considered. Dori perhaps, was a more natural choice.”  
  
Ori hums his agreement. When he finally falls asleep, it is to memories of spilled goat milk and Dori combing his hair. He thinks of Nori’s brightly wrapped candies and their nights spent huddled together under piles of blankets. He wonders what snippets make up Fili's childhood, if anything soft at all could have come from Thorin Durin.  
  
—  
  
Dori brings them a sealed jar of kvass, running his hands over Ori’s cheeks in reassurance but not acknowledging Fili once save for the two tins cups pulled down from Nori’s cabinet.  
  
“My first batch of the season,” he confides, as Ori breaks the seal and takes a whiff, honey sweet. “You may not be at home with me but you still get the first taste.”  
  
It is dry and tart and surprisingly cold, a combination that Ori will never adequately put words to. So instead he turns to Dori and says, “Perfect, as always.”  
  
That night, when they are left alone again, Ori wipes away silent tears over the pages of a book he isn’t reading. His grief has been building and building until finally it overflowed into a sudden, desperate desire to be thirteen again, to be young and hopeful and to look forward to spring.  
  
Fili pretends not to notice, but later, when his hollowed heart is stuffed full again, he comes and sits at his side, back against the wall, their shoulders touching. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to, because Ori suspects Fili may be the only person on earth who understands all of it, even the unspoken words written into his skin.  
  
—  
  
“Do you ever worry about how he’ll react when you see him again?”  
  
They are tracing constellations on the walls with sticks of white chalk. Fili suggested it, after Ori whispered his desire to see the stars again, hydra high above their heads, a secret to the candle light. Fili listened, he always listens, and so now they are recreating the night sky with an atlas, aided by occasional glances out the window. Sometimes, watching Fili’s bare shoulders as he sketches stars onto the stone, he forgets all about the chekists.  
  
Fili pauses before lightly tracing the lines of andromeda. “I don’t let myself think of it as an option,” he admits.  
  
Ori makes a pained noise in his throat and Fili turns to him, an apology ready to fall from his lips. “Please don’t take that the wrong way. I trust you and I trust Nori. It’s just easier when I have nothing to lose. If I think like that, I have everything.”  
  
Ori nods like he understands but he doesn’t, not really, because hope was the only thing that kept him going through Nori’s arrest. Hope and a little bit of desperation.  
  
—  
  
Nori’s footsteps are like thunder as he shouts, “Get upstairs and get below the floorboards.” He and Fili exchange a single terrified glance before they scramble to their feet and bound after him. He has already pried up the loose boards and is motioning for them to hurry when a loud knock sounds on the door. They are barely hidden from sight, hands pressed to their mouths to stifle their breathing, when a voice echoes from the entryway. “And no one else lives here with you?”  
  
“I’m afraid not. I had a tenant while I was in Siberia, but I was rather keen to have the space to myself once I returned. You understand.”  
  
Fili is utterly still beside him, their shoulders touching as dust falls from the floorboards above them. Ori tries valiantly not to shift against the plaster floor and Fili doesn’t appear to be moving at all.  
  
“I have your file here,” the solider says. He hears the tinker of china as Nori pours them both drinks.  
  
“Then you know I’ve been found innocent of any wrongdoing against the Kremlin.” Nori’s voice is calm but firm.  
  
“Indeed I do. A writ signed by Fili Durin.”  
  
“Are you surprised?” Nori asks. “Always seemed to me the Prince was a bit of a glorified paper pusher.”  
  
“He’s not very well known for his pardons.” The solider is pacing the floor, looking around for any excuse to search the house properly. Ori is more than a little surprised that they haven’t just stormed in with pistols drawn, pulling up floorboards with crowbars. “Better reputation for his death warrants.”     
  
Nori laughs then, a shaky, choked sound, his souvenir from Siberia. “Listen, if you think I’ve cut a deal with the guy, you got it wrong. I’m sure you’ve done your research but let me go ahead and refresh your memory.” There is the sound of shuffled paperwork, a folder set out along the table.    
  
“He may have set me free but he was also the bastard that put me in there. And that fuck up brother of his gave me these as a little keepsake. I’ve been nothing but loyal to the Union but there is no love lost here for the Durins.” If Ori didn’t know any better, he would think that his admission sounded genuine. The way that Fili shifts nearly imperceptibly by his side tells him he must be thinking the same exact thing.  
  
—  
  
“Did you remember signing his name?” Ori asks him. His stomach never quite recovered from the soldier’s visit and he has been wading through nausea for the better part of the week. Nori has him drinking plenty of water but it does little in the way of remedy.  
  
“No,” Fili says. “Though I knew I probably did.”  
  
“You never checked?”  
  
“I didn’t want to.”  
  
“And Kili? Did he give Nori those scars?” He doesn’t really want the answer, but he knows he needs to ask.  
  
“Yes,” Fili breathes and Ori’s stomach churns.  
  
“How do you know? Did he tell you?”  
  
“Only Kili left scars like that. It could have been no one else.”  
  
They do not speak again that night, not for days afterwards.  
  
—  
  
“Did you keep track?” Months of dark cellar walls have made it easier to ask every question that wells up in his throat. This he has wondered since the day Kili came to his desk with dried blood caked under his fingernails. He had pretended not to notice. Kili never needed to pretend.  
  
Fili rolls over to face him. “Keep track of what?”  
  
“The people you killed?”  
  
“In the beginning.”  
  
“What made you stop?”  
  
“It was driving me mad.” He says it so casually, a statement of fact, and Ori is suddenly reminded of Kili’s insistence that nothing will ever change, that the war was self determining even with Fili’s weekly battles.  
  
“Did Kili?” He thinks he already knows the answer.  
  
“No,” he whispers. “He convinced me to stop.”  
  
“I thought perhaps you were heartless,” Ori admits. He is thankful for the darkness, that he doesn’t have to see the consequences in Fili’s eyes. “Though most people did.”  
  
“My heart is just halved,” he says, but Ori shakes his head.  
  
“No, no. You share many things, but a heart is not one of them.” Of this much he is certain. Kili will fight to get everything he can out of life, every meal, every good book. Ori still isn’t sure what Fili fights for. Fili seems like he wants to disagree, but his mouth stays shut, his jaw clenched. He must think of his veins as radio wires, severed and frayed. Ori doesn’t think he could ever convince him otherwise, so today, at least, he gives up on trying.  
  
—  
  
Some nights Fili wakes with a shutter that wracks his body, a soft, broken sound. It jerks Ori awake every time to the sight of Fili sitting against the wall, hunched over as he catches his breath. He’s not sure if these nightmares are born of grief or fear or memories long past. Usually he lays back down within minutes, either falling back asleep or pretending to. Ori isn’t sure of that either. Tonight Fili lingers, his shoulders heaving, his face buried in his hands.  
  
“Would you like me to light a lamp?” He whispers out of habit.  
  
Fili shakes his head. “Thank you,” he says. “But I’m no stranger to nightmares.”  
  
“Guess being royalty isn’t as easy as we all thought it was,” Ori says into his pillow, his own eyes drifting shut.  
  
The sound he makes is torn between a scoff and a wince. “Kili was the only prince among us.”  
  
Ori doesn’t answer and Fili doesn’t elaborate and when he finally lays back down, Ori is wide awake again. He wonders if Fili ever called him a prince, in the darkness of their bedroom, whispered against the nape of his neck. Perhaps this explains Kili’s relative ease in accepting the name so harshly pinned on them both. Perhaps he’s always been a prince, if only to his brother.  
  
—  
  
Nori stalks down the stairs early one morning and hands Fili a manila envelope. He stares up at Nori, holding his gaze for a moment or two before ripping open the careful sealing with his teeth. Ori peaks over his shoulder and feels a special brand of relief and dread— travel documents.    
  
“They’ll get you as far as Edinburgh. You’ll have to make it to Aberdeen on your own.” Fili is running his fingers over the forgeries, as if in a trance.  
  
“There’s two sets,” Nori continues, turning to Ori. “One for each of you.”  
  
“I’m not going,” he says immediately.  
  
Fili and Nori say his name in absolute, disapproving unison. “I’m not,” he says, ignoring them. “This is my home. I’m not running.”  
  
“You may have to,” Fili says softly.  
  
“Our white lies about your whereabouts are only going to last you so long.”  
  
“Then I’ll leave Moscow,” Ori offers. “But I won’t leave Russia.”  
  
“Flee to Stalingrad?” Fili asks. “To starve as soon as winter comes?”  
  
Ori shakes his head. “I will go with you to the station, I will watch your train until I can’t see it anymore but then I’m returning home. I’m going to make breakfast for Dori and look for a new job. I won't be swayed on this.”  
  
That night they don’t speak. They don’t sigh or whisper or trace stars on the wall. They lay, silent, and dream of home.  
  
—  
  
“I will leave from Leningradsky,” Nori says. He looks fuller, stronger, like subversion feeds his starving body.  
  
“Leave?” Ori echoes.  
  
Nori pulls him into his arms and it is as close to an apology as he will ever get. “I’m heading for West Berlin,” he says. “If there is to be a war, I will side with anyone who calls themselves an enemy of the Union.”  
  
Ori cannot speak for the lead stone in his throat so, as always, Fili speaks for him. “They’ll be lucky to have you.”  
  
“I hope more than anything that we will meet again, but if we don’t, know that I love you and Dori more than sunlight. I hope you will be happy here.” Nori pulls away and adjusts his coat and Ori is too dazed to feel the grief he knows will sit for millennia in his chest.  
  
Nori and Fili clasp hands, exchange meaningful nods, and with one last hug, he heads towards the door. “Stay off the main roads,” he says. “And good luck.”  
  
With Nori gone, their excuses to linger have dwindled and soon they are both dressed to leave. Fili hands Ori documents with his photo pasted in the corner but he pushes them away, shaking his head. “I won’t need them.”  
  
“Just in case,” he whispers. “Please, keep them, just in case.”  
  
Ori tucks them into the inner pocket of his trench coat, where they weigh heavy on his heart.  
  
Fili turns and whispers, “If anything happens, anything at all, you run and you board that train. You don’t need to leave Russia, stay in Tayshet for all I care. But if they come after you, you run. Promise me.” Ori murmurs his promise and Fili pulls him forward, surprising him by kissing his forehead. They both take a matching, ragged breath, and reach for the door.  
  
Nori’s apartment is five miles away from the station and they cannot risk a cab. Instead they keep their heads ducked low, taking detours across side streets, and after two hours of walking, Ori’s adrenaline has worn down to nothing but a bone deep weariness.  
  
“Keep up,” Fili says, a bit of his military bearing slipping through his voice whenever he lags behind. Fili is looking back at him, beckoning for Ori to pick up his pace, when they enter a darkened alley outside the Red Square. Ori sees them first and when Fili finally turns to glance down the alley it is to two chekists pinching cigarettes between their fingers, leaning back against the brick wall. Fili seems to recognise them, a breath of a name passing his lips.  
  
The four of them stand frozen for a moment, but it is Fili who moves first. He takes Ori’s hand, pulls him forward and runs past the men in uniform before their cigarette butts even hit the ground. It isn’t until they are steps away from the entrance to the street that Ori hears the sound of weapons being cocked. Two shots fire in near tandem and like a choreographed dance Fili stumbles and falls at his side, collapsing onto the pavement, his arm twisted under his body. Ori’s shout of grief is swallowed by his burning lungs, replaced by a whisper of a sigh.  
  
The chekists have their pistols raised once more and Ori keeps his promise. He runs, not daring to stop until he reaches the station doors, flooded with people milling and mingling, newspaper boys and food vendors. He shoves his way past them, his breath coming in suffocated, staccato bursts. But he keeps going, until he sees the number nine in painted white.  
  
Ori collapses at the platform, falling to his knees, unnoticed among throngs of brown coats and knit hats, children weaving in and out of cracked doors, lieutenants dressed as peasants. He stays where he is, kneeling on the floor with his hands pressed flat to the uneven pavement, and he mourns. Tears fall from his eyes, trace the curve of his nose, the seam of his lips. He thinks of Kili, alone in the muddy hills of Scotland, his beautiful, golden brother, shot dead in an alley way.  
  
He allows himself until his pulse evens out into adrenaline spikes and then he stands, stumbles towards the third door from the coal carriage, and waits. He knows Fili will not come, he saw him fall to the pavement, but he waits anyway, his last tribute to a man he could have loved had the cobblestone streets of Moscow allowed it.  
  
Perhaps he’ll watch the train pull from the station and pretend Fili is aboard, waving Moscow goodbye from the sill of an open window, on his way to Aberdeen. Perhaps he’ll return home tonight and pretend Nori isn’t bound for Western Berlin, that he will wake the next morning before the gaslights are out and walk to the Lubyanka on the muddy sidewalks. Maybe he’ll imagine Kili, leaning over his desk before the sun ever rises, whispering his name like he owns it.  
  
A hand grabs his arm from the side, and Ori leaps back, nearly into the gap between the train and the platform in an attempt to get away. He turns, expecting a military issued pistol aimed at his throat but instead he finds Fili, flushed and gasping for breath, pulling him towards a flimsy bridge and onto the train.  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Ori gasps, shaking as Fili pulls him into a hug. “Oh, thank God, thank God.”  
  
“They missed,” Fili says, and his voice bleeds through his chest and into Ori’s veins. “Kili trained them himself and those bastards missed.”  
  
The whistle calls from the front of the platform and Ori tries to pull away but Fili keeps him there, his breath against his cheek.

“Come with me,” Fili whispers, his fingers pressing into Ori’s shoulders. The skin under his eyes is bruised black from a lack of sleep, his hair is far too long, his beard overgrown, his usually bright eyes are dark in the overcast. Here, with his voice of iron and his steady gaze, Ori would have said yes to anything.

“Why?” He asks, instead.  
  
“You’ve saved my life a hundred times over. Let me save yours. You will not walk free of this anymore.”  
  
Ori allows Fili to pull him through the carriages. They remain silent until they reach the compartments lined with workers crouched on the floor, sitting on top of boxes and hastily packed luggage. Ori should be horrified. He should be in one of the many crowds of people jockeying for position in front of a window for one last glimpse of his city. He isn’t, instead he looks at Fili and tries to summon any hint of regret for what he is about to do.  
  
Fili doesn’t turn, he doesn’t smile, but he does discreetly take Ori’s hand in his, squeezing for a brief moment before letting go again. He doesn’t know who the gesture is meant to comfort, but it only makes Ori love him all the more.  
   
—  
  
Ori licks his chapped lips, they taste of sea salt and brine. He used to long for the sea, pouring over books at the library and imagining an expanse of ocean that never ends. Now he longs for nothing but a glass of water and a dry coat, perhaps a glimpse of land, even an island would do. Instead he stares across the hull of the ship, at the little swaths of bundled cloth, the outlines of other passengers tucked against the walls of the boat to stave off the wind.  
  
Fili is warm against his side. With his eyes closed, he looks skeletal, gaunt, bruised deep and rotting. But Ori knows that when he opens them, his eyes will be bright enough to see by, that he will look alive for the first time since Kili disappeared through the carriage door.  
  
“It’s been ten days,” Ori says, his voice raw.  
  
“It will be many more than that yet,” Fili says. He sounds calm, almost content.  
  
“How did it happen, the two of you?” He asks. It seems as good a time as any, they certainly have enough of it to spare.  
  
“It didn’t,” he says. “Kili and I have always been this way.” He feels disgusted with himself at the slightest burn of envy that he feels when Fili says his brother’s name, even though sometimes it seems like Kili is the only thing they have in common.  
  
“Surely - ” Ori begins, but he quickly finds he cannot put his thoughts to words so he shuts his mouth and allows Fili to take over.  
  
“We shared a room as children. It had two beds, but more often than not we shared that as well.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“We didn’t wish to be apart. Perhaps we would have been, had our parents not died.” He says it without a hint of resentment for the death of his mother, shot twice in the back of the head, or his father, throat slit from ear to ear. Perhaps he absolved the Union of all blame years ago. Or maybe he just doesn’t dwell on things he cannot change.  
  
“But Thorin never tried to separate us,” he continues. “And one night Kili kissed me.”  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
“I kissed him back.”  
  
“Just like that? You didn’t talk about it?”  
  
“What was there to talk about?” It answers every question, even the ones he couldn’t put to words. Fili and Kili are innate, there was never any need to speak.  
  
“My uncle knew,” he says, suddenly. It is rare that he volunteers information unprompted, so Ori doesn’t interrupt. “He wasn’t happy about it, but we made it clear it wasn’t negotiable. So we moved out. Kili was devastated but I didn’t mind.” Their separate apartments, doors away, did little but add fuel to the fire of the rumors in Moscow. In a city fraught with housing shortages, families did not live separately, certainly not without reason. Their personal affairs have been picked apart with hysterical frequency among those who work in the Red Square. Only the most vicious rumors turned out to be correct.  
  
“No one in Scotland will know that you’re brothers.” Fili stiffens beside him, his eyes wide, and Ori realises this possibility has not yet crossed his mind.  
  
“No,” he says. “No, they won’t.”  
  
—  
  
Edinburgh shares Moscow’s sky. It is a hazy grey and so humid that Ori thinks every breath must fill his lungs with liquid. The instant, nauseous hit of homesickness that he had been expecting never comes. He wonders when it will.  
  
Fili’s English is more practiced than his own. It was years of private tutoring and estate dinners prior to the embargoes that sanded his accent down to a slight lilt, just a little off to the ears of Scotsmen. Few people can place it. They pay with old coins for a room above a tavern hall and the owner asks with a toothy grin what business they have so far from Wales.  
  
“Visiting my brother,” he answers easily enough. Ori finds it best not to speak at all, until they are safely tucked away in their room.  
  
“You know, I never really thought we’d have to speak English.”  
  
Fili pauses in the process of removing his shirt and then he makes the most glorious sound in the world. He laughs. “You what?” He snorts, sitting helplessly on the edge of the mattress after losing the struggle to his matted undershirt. He is laughing still, his shoulders hunched, and Ori’s mouth goes dry at the sight. “You just thought - ”  
  
He can’t finish his sentence, so Ori says, “I clearly didn’t think, now did I? You just flashed your blue eyes at me and I came along without a fuss.”  
  
Fili’s laugh has tapered off into a fond smile. “And I am so very glad you did.”  
  
“You better be,” he mumbles, feigning disgust as Fili crumples up his shirt and tosses it clean over his head.  
  
“You’ve smelt better.”  
  
“Yeah,” Fili says with a grin. “So have you.”  
  
—  
  
The train station flies a flag of deep red with three brick towers painted in angles. It is derived from a coat of arms, clinging to the last few roots of its nobility and Aberdeen is suddenly so very foreign that Ori thinks he might be sick. Fili is leaning against the glass window at the ticket counter, charming a young woman into giving him directions to the mining sector. He comes away with two bus tickets and a warning.  
  
“They don’t like foreigners in the outer districts. There’s been rumors of cheap labour shipped in because of the trade unions, Irish and Eastern Bloc. We’ll need to be subtle.”  
  
“We’ll need to find an inn,” Ori says, flipping the small piece of paper over in his fingers.  
  
“And then we find Kili,” he whispers.  
  
“And then we find Kili.”  
  
The city centre is almost beautiful, with old white stone buildings and steepled towers. There is nothing new, not a single government apartment or rising metal structure. Fili looks out the window but Ori is willing to bet that he doesn’t see a single thing. They are so close now that his hands shake. It is only minutes before the quaint churches give way to factories. The sky is black and the houses are uniform brick, attached in rows, mirrored on either side of the street along muddied sidewalks. Dusk colours the town a muted orange until even the air looks toxic. The bus stops before a beaten park bench and they follow the flood of people out the door.  
  
“She gave me an address,” Fili says. “An inn run by second generation immigrants from the Great War. She said they would be sympathetic.”  
  
They find it easily enough, situated off the main stretch, sandwiched between a butcher and broker shop. This, at least, feels more familiar. The man at the desk is almost comically large, with short red hair and freckled skin. He doesn’t look up from the book in his lap as he reaches for the remnants of a cheese plate with his free hand.  
  
“Name’s Bombur. What can I do for you?”  
  
“We’re new to the city,” Fili says, his voice steady. “We’re looking for a friend, a Russian, who we can lodge with. If not, we will need a room for the night.”  
  
“You lookin’ for a specific Russian, or just Russians in general?” His tone makes Ori’s teeth clench in disapproval but Fili doesn’t appear to mind.  
  
“A friend. He would have come eight months ago, maybe more.”  
  
“Does this friend have a name?”  
  
“Kili,” he says.  
  
Bombur’s vaguely hostile attitude is gone in seconds. He slaps the desk with the flat of his palm and lets out a booming, guttural laugh. “Well then. I know exactly where that lad is. With my brother, at Dwalin’s pub. It is late though,” he adds, turning to glance at the clock behind him. “They may be tucking in soon, though you never know with Bofur.”  
  
“Where,” Ori gasps, his mouth dry, because it seems Fili has lost the ability to speak.  
  
“It’s a good half mile from here, I’ll tell you that.”  
  
“Can you write a map?”  
  
Bombur raises his eyebrows at Ori’s frantic tone, but complies, scribbling directions in flowing script and wishing them both luck. Neither of them say a word in return, instead they glance over the scrap of paper and all but run for the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Kili is standing at the bar with coal blackened skin and dirty fingernails. His long hair is cut short, curled in the humidity, still uneven and falling into his eyes so it suits him just the same. He is smiling at the man to his right, nodding his head at the enthusiastic story telling, a sliver of indulgence he rarely displayed in Russia. He doesn’t look happy, but he looks resigned to the coal mines of the north. He would almost call it jaded, though Ori knows that’s not quite right. Kili has seen every monster the world had to offer beneath the cobblestones of the Red Square and yet Ori can’t shake the feeling that he’s lost something in his trip across the world.  
  
Fili has stopped walking and stands at his side, a marble cut statue, pale and out of place in a pub like this.  
  
“Come on,” he says.  
  
Fili turns to him, blue eyes wide. “I can’t do this,” he whispers. They have faced exile and treason and yet this is where he falters, before the brother who he let go without saying goodbye.  
  
Ori tries to think of something to say, anything that could pass for comforting in a pinch. But before his tongue can catch up, Kili is stretching his arms above his head, murmuring a few words to the bartender, and turning towards the door.  
  
Kili stops, fingers halfway to his pockets, and stares. His eyes drag up from the floor like a military inspection while the room continues to move around them; laughter and tinkering glasses. Then, without any warning at all, Kili lunges for the bar.  
  
His fingers close around the neck of a wine bottle and he slams it hard against the rigid edge of a steel backed chair, shattering it into dagger sharp pieces with almost practiced perfection. He crosses the room in three strides and Ori barely manages to say his name before Kili is cupping one hand against the nape of Fili’s neck and pressing the broken bottle to his throat with the other. Blood wells up along a nick in his skin as Kili growls out, “How fucking dare you,” in disused Russian.  
  
Fili smiles then, his eyes running over the lines in Kili’s face, made all the clearer by remnants of coal dust. Kili allows the glass to dig into his neck for a moment longer before he drops it to the floor with a shuttering crack and reels back to punch Fili square in the jaw.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Kili, stop!” Ori shouts as Kili knocks him to the ground.  
  
“You,” Kili snaps, pointing a shaking finger in his direction. “You can fuck right off, Ori. What gives you any right to tell me what to do?”  
  
Fili is dabbing at the blood from his split lip when he says, “Ori’s the only reason I’m alive.”  
  
“Alright, alright, kid. Show’s over.” The bartender is big, bald, and hulking and Ori is rather certain he could crush them both in each hand. He pulls Kili off the floor and pats his shoulder. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it’s not going to keep going on in my fucking pub.”  
  
The spell is broken and Kili’s snarling expression fades to exhaustion in the span of a breath. “Sorry Dwalin,” he murmurs, digging into his pocket for a few grimy notes. “For the bottle and the mess.”  
  
Dwalin eyes them for a moment before saying, “You need anything, you know where to find me. Why don’t you boys take this outside?”  
  
Kili collapses on the raised sidewalk, his forehead to his knees while Ori sits gingerly by his side and Fili remains standings, arms crossed in front of him, blood smeared along his cheek.  
  
“Who is still alive?” Kili asks, his voice muffled.  
  
“No one that I know of.” Fili answers.  
  
“Uncle?”  
  
“Died the day you left.”  
  
Kili looks like he wants to ask more but he doesn’t. “Gloin?” He asks. “Dain?”  
  
Fili shakes his head. Kili’s fingers wind into the roots of his hair, tugging to dull the pain.  
  
“Gimli?” FIli asks.  
  
“Newport.”  
  
Fili nods like that means something to him. They are beginning to attract attention from passersby and even through the haze of alcohol and grief Kili appears to recognise that the streets aren’t the safest place for three Russians in a coal mining town.     
  
“Let’s go back to my flat. It’s just down the way.” He leads and Fili drops back behind them, watching every corner and alleyway with paranoia perfected by years in the secret police. Kili lives in a squat brick cottage repurposed into flats, with a flimsy wooden door and a crooked knocker. His hands are shaking as he fumbles with his keys and pushes the door open, leading them to a second entrance behind the stairs. They barely make it into the sitting room before Kili is digging out a bottle of wine.  
  
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?” Fili asks.  
  
Ori flinches as Kili slams his fist down onto the table. “I was sure you were dead.” He hisses.  
  
“Me too,” Fili admits, not quite meeting his brother’s poison glare. Ori takes a step forward, ready to intervene in what he is certain is about to devolve into another physical altercation.  
  
“Tell me everything.” The room is littered with old wicker furniture but none of them move to sit.  
  
“Gloin had an insider and we had a day’s notice. All I could do in a day was a single set of documents. Gloin managed the same, and between us we agreed to send you and Gimli. I was going to turn myself in, but - ” he pauses. “We hid in Nori’s cellar for a few months while he lied to every agent sent our way. He eventually got us papers to - ” Fili’s monotone account is cut short when Kili throws himself forward, his arms around his brother’s neck.  
  
His face is buried in the unkempt blonde of his hair when Fili finally comes to his senses and pulls Kili closer. He presses a kiss to the crown of his head as Kili makes a sound of absolutely desperation, speaking to just as many months of darkness as his brother’s cellar walls. Ori steps back towards the door, just as Kili’s shoulders begin to shake with muffled sobs and Fili pulls away to wipe the tears from his cheeks and kiss his eyelids with something akin to worship. When their lips finally meet, Kili’s knuckles go white, fisted in his brother’s coat, and he sags against him, surrendering everything to Fili’s fingertips.  
  
Kili’s eyes are red and glassy but even through the tears he is beautiful, maybe even more so, a Botticelli portrait of grief. Their foreheads are pressed together as Fili whispers sweet words, his breath against his lips, and Kili nods in miserable agreement.  
  
Ori shuts the door behind him with a barely audible click.  
  
—  
  
He returns to the pub, stepping carefully among cracked, careless roads, keeping his head down. Dwalin is still at the bar, watching with folded arms as men celebrate in circles the end of their working day. As soon as he sees him, he waves him over, gesturing to an empty stool. “Any friend of Kili’s is a friend of mine. You look like you could use a drink.” He serves him a half pint of stout, thick and dark and frankly Ori has to gag it down but he appreciates the gesture.  
  
“They haven’t offed each other then?” Dwalin asks, a tad gruffly.  
  
“Sorry, what?”  
  
“Kili and the blonde? They haven’t managed to kill each other?”  
  
“No,” Ori answers. He knows his English sounds thick and forced and he hates the very idea of it. “No, they are not like that.” He grimaces. “Not usually.”  
  
He hopes this will be enough and the bartender will leave him to his warm, thick, terrible excuse for an alcoholic beverage but instead he strokes his beard and says, “I thought you might’ve been after him.”  
  
He tilts his head in question and Dawlin continues, “Establishment men or some such.”  
  
“No,” he begins. “We are not - ”  
  
“Miners don’t flee with a regime change. No, the only ones leaving Russia in the wake of Stalin were either a threat to Malenkov or had the standing to make enemies. I knew Kili when he was fresh off the boat and I can count backwards from three same as the next man. Not that I wouldn’t leave as well, if I had to live like that. Good riddance.”  
  
Ori swallows a mouthful of stout in an attempt to push down the sudden, vicious anger that erupts from his lungs. It does little good. He remembers Dori’s heartfelt defense of the Union with mirror clarity, and in seconds he finds himself repeating his lecture in varied English, finishing with, “You have no idea what it was like before Stalin, do not pretend to know how it will be after.”  
  
He may be far too young to remember the famines and public hangings before the Great War, but this man knows nothing of Russia at all and yet he passes judgement on every Soviet leader in a single breath. Exile makes patriots of everyone and Ori feels certain if he cuts himself now he will bleed red and gold.  
  
Dwalin smiles then with silver capped teeth. “So you were Stalinists, huh?”  
  
“I was an accountant,” he snaps. “And you ask too many questions.”    
  
“If you’d lived with tight lipped Kili for this long, you’d be curious too.” It sounds almost like an apology, punctuated with another half pint set in front of him, free of charge. Dwalin leaves him alone after that, and Ori nurses his lager, feeling oddly lightheaded after drinking on an empty stomach. He begins to lose track of time, torn between worrying and eavesdropping, his lifelong hobbies.  
  
Finally, when the pub begins to clear, he thinks it may be safe to return to Kili’s flat.  
  
“Do you have a place to stay?” Dwalin asks, catching him before he reaches the door.  
  
“With Kili.”  
  
“If you need anything,” he gestures towards the ceiling. “I live just above.”

Ori doesn't thank him and Dwalin doesn't seem to mind.  
   
—  
  
Kili’s flat is dark, the lights left off and the doors unlocked, but neither of them are asleep. He hears them breathing like prayers through their teeth. Ori is just drunk enough to stay, just sober enough to creep closer to the open bedroom door without a sound. He sinks to the floor, his head resting back against the wall, and listens. They are close to silent, as they were in their bedroom in Moscow, save for the frantic, rustling catch of clothes being hastily discarded over the edge of the bed.  
  
“I don’t have any - ” Kili whispers.  
  
“It’s fine, we’ll just- ” they both sigh in glorious unison. Ori shuts his eyes and imagines the way Fili’s fingers slide over his hip bones, how they move against each other, with rocking thrusts that turn frantic as Kili breaks his unspoken vow and moans his brother’s name through bitten lips.  
  
It is nothing like the slow, familiar display he had seen before, with Kili savouring every roll of his hips as Fili’s fingers bruised marks into his thighs. Instead they are impatient, rushed, and it is over far too quickly. Fili stays silent, but Kili whispers benedictions as he comes, and with the last creak of the mattress, Ori’s eyes open.  
  
Alcohol works wonders, turning the veil of time opaque, and Ori thinks they’ve fallen asleep until Fili whispers, “Don’t cry.” There’s a sudden shift along the sheets and he imagines them entwined together, no room between them.  
  
“I couldn’t find Gimli at first,” Kili whispers, his voice slightly hoarse. Ori moves closer to the door, inch by inch, until he can hear every word. “I went back to get you, and I saw your bag by the door. An old man was rifling through it, I got it back though - ” He pauses but Fili doesn’t interrupt, and Ori imagines that listening to Kili speak feels a bit like repentance.  
  
“Eventually I did find him, and he helped me look for a minute or two until we were far enough out that he could tell me the truth. I didn’t speak to him again until we reached Tayshet. When we finally got to Vladivostok, Gimli hit me so hard over the head that my vision blurred for days. He told me if I did not get on the boat, if I didn’t eat and sleep, that I’d be throwing away your last gift to me - ” Kili’s voice cracks then and Fili remains silent. Ori can hear nothing but the constant, shifting sound of Fili’s hand stroking his cheek, brushing through his hair.  
  
“I won’t apologise,” Fili says finally. “You would have done just the same.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have,” Kili says through a shuddering breath. “It’s all I’ve thought about for the better part of a year. I would have had both of us stay behind because I was too afraid to let you go. I’m far more selfish than you are.”  
  
Ori closes his eyes, thinking back to Fili’s soft admission on the edge of the train platform. He wonders who is right. Perhaps they’re both selfish, but in different ways.  
  
“You’ve done well here,” Fili says, but Kili is quick to contradict him.  
  
“I’ve survived,” he says. “Just like you.”  
  
Fili’s voice is muffled as he replies, “Just like me.”  
  
—  
  
Ori sleeps like he hasn’t in years and years, since before Nori traded secrets like ration cards and threw their family under the shadow of the Union. He sleeps like children must, with dreams of no substance, nothing scarring or lasting that he remembers in the morning. The room is bright, the overcast clouds a harsh grey through the windows. He slips off a moth eaten afghan and glances through the kitchen doorway, calling Fili’s name.  
  
He finds him in the bedroom, tracing a golden crucifix with crooked fingers. It hung above their bed in Moscow, Ori knows because he helped Kili pry it from the wall as they packed. It is beautiful and intricate, so unlike the protestant crosses that mark the Church of England. It is one of few signs of Fili and Kili’s inherited nobility, a gentle refusal of secularism, a reminder of lavish things.  
  
“Kili had work,”  Fili says without turning, as he continues his careful inspection. “I didn’t know he brought it. I didn’t even notice it until just now.”  
  
Ori sits on the bed and watches him. After so many months trapped in dark spaces, he has learned when to speak and when to listen. Fili unhooks the crucifix and weighs it in his hand before joining him, the mattress creaking beneath them.  
  
“I don’t believe in God.” It sounds like a confession, so Ori offers his own.  
  
“Neither do I.”  
  
“Kili does,” he says. This much Ori had already guessed. It is not obvious, but it shows at times with a whispered phrase if nothing else. He shares a single glance with Fili and decides against saying what they both must be thinking; if God indeed exists, all three of them are bound for hell.  
  
“Does he know?” Fili nods because of course he does, Kili knows every dip and fold of his mind.  
  
“And you didn’t mind sleeping with this above your head, where anyone could see it?”  
  
“I encouraged it.”  
  
“For Kili?”  
  
Fili nods, and then smiles, his fingernail dipping into a flourished curve. “I told him it reminded me how to worship.” And worship he did, with his fingertips and his mouth, pulling prayers from Kili’s lips and swallowing them with his tongue. “Now it just reminds me of home.”  
  
—  
  
Fili glances up every few minutes to look for a clock that isn’t there, then his eyes slide to the door, and back down to his book. It is a cycle that began the second the sun went down and has continued for an hour since. It gets dark far too early in Scotland and it throws them both off balance. In Moscow, with the sun this low in the sky, dinner would already be finished with alcohol soon making a much needed appearance.  
  
It is another half hour before the door swings open, another half hour of Fili’s desperate glances towards the hall and the slow, mechanical sound of pages turning. Kili is slightly less dirty than he had been the night before, but still his boots track footprints of black soot and his fingers are stained with it. It appears he has been suffering from the same needless anxiety that has Fili glancing for a clock, because the second he is through the door he pulls Fili into his arms, inhaling deeply into the crook of his neck.  
  
Their contrast is picturesque, with Kili’s short cropped hair, made impossibly dark by coal dust and Fili’s reaching down past his nape. His white clothes come away dirty and his cheek is smudged with black but neither of them seem to care.  
  
Fili remembers that Ori is in the room well before Kili does. He glances over at him as Kili attempts to tug them both towards the bedroom door, but Ori only gives him a reassuring smile. They need to reacquaint themselves with each other’s bodies, with every new mark and scar. It will be many days before they can stand to be apart for more than hours at a time. He knows it will be many more than that before Kili stops waking with tears in his eyes at the sight of his brother beside him.  
  
So Ori allows them their desperation and does his very best to pretend he cannot hear the rustle of sheets through the thin bedroom walls.  
  
—  
  
Ori reads aloud from novels, stumbles over English syllables, while Fili corrects his pronunciation. He doubts it will do any good after a lifetime of bad habits but it’s worth a try. He stutters to a stop over a name he can’t quite grasp, but when he turns to Fili for help he sees him staring out the window, his attention miles away. Ori closes the book, a corner folded over to mark his place, and he waits.  
  
“Those mines will kill him,” Fili says softly. “Whether it’s illness or accident. He will die down there.”  
  
“There don’t seem to be many other jobs in towns like this,” he says. Everyone he meets is a miner or the wife of one. Even the children, fourteen and fifteen years old, carry picks twice their size, chasing the heels of their older brothers.  
  
“I’ll find him something,” Fili says. “It’ll take time, but I’ll find something.”  
  
“And you?” He asks. “What will you do?”  
  
“I’ll work in the mines, of course.”  
  
—  
  
Ori wonders if their silence can be attributed to the living walls of the government apartments. They have never been outside of the sleepless eye of the Union and so they learned early on to keep their whispers and pleas in their mouths, communicated instead by hands on bitten skin. It is Kili who first finds his voice. Perhaps he has simply been away longer, and it comes easier to him.  
  
He starts with soft sighs, little sounds of pleasure from behind closed doors, sounds which Ori can almost ignore, as if the walls are playing tricks. Over time his vocal cords are restrung, tuned to the pitch of Fili’s mouth on his skin.  
  
Ori returns home to their bedroom door propped open, barely a handspan, but enough for Kili’s voice to ring like crystal as he gasps “ _Fili, Fili, Fili_.” His cries quickly dampen to whispers, words Ori cannot make out, but Fili’s hitched breathing tells him all he needs to know.  
  
It is Kili’s voice that convinces him to glance beyond the doorway, hungry for any bit of the brothers on display. Kili is on his back, his ankles crossed high along Fili’s spine. Fili’s fingers lift Kili’s thighs, his hips, as he thrusts into him. His back is straight and his muscles are taught, shifting with every brush of Kili’s bare feet against this shoulder blade.  
  
Kili's hair is matted and sweaty and it sticks to his skin as he tosses his head back and forth on the pillow, eyes wide and mouth open just enough for Fili to lean down and snatch his bottom lip with his teeth.  
  
“Fili,” he whispers. “I swear to God, if you do not touch me - ” Fili adjusts his weight, falling onto one hand while the other reaches between them to fist Kili’s roughly, his thumb pressing over his slit. Kili lets out a choked sound and Fili’s movements become more frantic, a little harsher.  
  
Kili comes with a shout and a prayer, but Fili remains silent, only slumping against Kili’s chest once he’s drifted down, fingers tangled in his hair. They exchange soft, lingering kisses, while Kili noses at his brothers cheek.  
  
Fili groans and rolls off to the side, reaching for a cloth on the bedside table in a halfhearted attempt to clean them both. But Kili is already pulling the sheets up over his bare legs, and as if in silent agreement he lays back down at his side and folds his arms around him. Fili’s lips rest against a notch in Kili’s spine, just below the nape of his neck.  
  
They fit so beautifully together, and Ori’s heart clenches in his chest. He knows he is intruding on something that doesn’t belong to him, but that doesn’t stop him from lingering until Fili’s eyes flutter shut.  
  
—  
  
Luckily for Ori, numbers never change.  
  
“You were a Soviet accountant.” Balin is well kept and put together, his beard trimmed and snowy white, a rare sight in a mining town.  
  
“I was.”  
  
“However, your papers say you worked in the mineral mines.”  
  
“They do.” Ori holds his gaze. After running from the chekists, everything else seems paltry.  
  
“Will you sit an exam for me?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
He works through number problems with barely a pause. It feels a bit like returning home, and when he hands the paper back, Balin laughs, a hardy, pleasant sound. “How does Monday sound?”  
  
—  
  
Fili is reading an old, broken copy of _Peter and Wendy_ in English, but he looks up when Ori comes in, his employment papers clutched in his hand. “I’m an accountant again,” he says, and Fili smiles, shutting the book without a glance at the page number.  
  
“Congratulations. When do you start?”  
  
“Monday. It’s a decent salary. In a few months I imagine I’ll have enough to find a flat of my own.”  
  
Fili’s smile falls in seconds. “Why?”  
  
“Well I can hardly sleep in your sitting room for the rest of my life, now can I?”  
  
“Once all three of us are working, we can easily find a two bedroom - ”  
  
“Fili, look. I don’t want to intrude. You two need space, you need room to be yourselves and to live without someone watching your every move. If there’s any silver lining to being stuck here it’s that you and Kili can finally have time to yourselves. ”  
  
His fingers flit briefly over the cover of his book. “I never thought you were intruding.”  
  
Ori knows Fili’s faces; like Janus he has only two. Fili was the tactician in Moscow, with hardened eyes and a stone heart. With Kili he is an alter boy, falling to the psalms of his lips. But this face, uncertain and unsure, Ori has never seen before.  
  
“Talk to me,” he says softly, but Fili won’t speak. He is gazing down at his book, tracing the gilded curl of a mermaid’s tail with his fingertip.  
  
“I think perhaps you’re my first friend,” he admits. “Kili’s as well. Is it so wrong that we want to keep you close?”  
  
Not wrong, Ori wants to tell him, but cruel. “It will be a long time before I can afford to move anywhere at all,” he says instead. “We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”  
  
“My uncle hated that phrase. He said the Union was paved with bricks of learning, planning, and intent.” He sounds like he’s repeating a dream he has only just remembered.  
  
“Well,” Ori says, standing. “We’re not in Moscow anymore.”  
  
“No. We are not.”  
  
—  
  
Ori returns home one evening to find Fili on his knees, his brother’s trousers pushed down halfway in a hasty mess of fabric, his mouth studiously working Kili’s cock. They are in the kitchen, Fili’s back partially facing him while Kili’s fingers grip at his hair with white knuckles.  
  
He sees them through the doorway and has every intention of turning away but at this point Ori’s road to hell is well paved. Kili tilts his head back, exposing his neck, littered with fading bite marks, but his eyes remain closed. He lazily thrusts forward, letting a soft sigh pass his lips as Fili moves a hand to his hip. Fili pulls back long enough to press a lingering kiss onto the slight ridge of his hipbone.  
  
“Christ, Fee - ” Fili swallows around him and Ori’s mouth goes dry at the sound. He moves with absolute precision, and he can only imagine what he is doing with his tongue to make Kili look so very desperate but whatever it is, it comes from years of practice.  
  
His fingertips trace delicate patterns on the skin of Kili’s thighs, and it is that final show of affection that pulls Ori back towards the door.  
  
—  
  
“You’re a wee little thing aren’t you?” He is the same man who spoke to Kili so enthusiastically the night they arrived, with his battered woolen hat and shining eyes. Ori inclines his head a little, clutching at his drink, hoping that maybe if he ignores him long enough he might simply disappear. Instead, he introduces himself as Bofur through oversized teeth, complete with an enthusiastic pat to his back.  
  
“So,” he continues. “How old are you?”  
  
“Twenty two,” he lies, because he’s not quite, not until November.  
  
Bofur makes a sound of sympathy, taking a seat beside him. “Just a kid, then.”  
  
“We have far younger in the mines,” Dwalin growls. He never seems like he’s listening, but Ori imagines that’s the role of a bartender, deaf until they’re needed. “We were men at that age.”  
  
“I would take the mines and their perils over exile.” Bofur’s cheery voice is missing a bit of its usual luster. “As I imagine you would as well. Twenty is too young to be away from home with no hope of going back.”  
  
Ori swallows mouthfuls of ale and Dwalin changes the subject.  
  
—  
  
Perhaps it’s a cliche, the Princes who only wish for a friend to share. It certainly feels like one at times, when they lay entwined on Kili’s threadbare couch, discussing Russian literature with increasingly raised voices, waiting for Ori to chime in as if he has something worth adding.  
  
Ori will play this part for them, he will be open minded and understanding and kind. But at night he lays on his mattress and he listens to Kili’s crescendoing voice and he thinks about Fili. He wonders if he ever gives up any of his iron control, or if it has been caked into his veins with enough force to keep him upright despite Kili’s bending touch.  
  
He wonders if Fili is ever on his back, his eyes wide open, raised to the ceiling, as Kili takes him apart with careful precision. He imagines the noises he would make, open mouthed and gasping, his calls and whispered sighs. He imagines Kili’s fingers in his mouth, pushing on his tongue, encouraging him.  
  
But as far as he knows, control is one of many things Kili is willing to give, one he doesn’t appear to miss, as he shouts his praises from the bedroom.  
  
—  
  
“I’ve found you a job,” Fili tells him as he scales a cod with a blunt fruit knife.  
  
Kili is scrubbing his hands in the sink, waiting for the water to run clear again. “I already have a job.”  
  
Ori glances up from his papers, eyeing them both warily.  
  
“Now you have a new one. Dwalin agreed to hire you as his barkeep.”  
  
“He’s offered me that once before and I turned him down.” Kili’s usually light tone is brittle and coarse but Fili hardly bats an eyelid. His knife slides easily through tacky, silver flesh.  
  
“Well now he offers it with a pay raise. And I will be taking over your mining contract.”  
  
“Like hell you will.”  
  
Fili places his knife down carefully onto the counter top. “You start on Saturday.”  
  
“Fili, you can’t just - ”  
  
“This isn’t an argument.”  
  
Ori imagines he should probably take a walk to avoid whatever brawl is about to take place but just as he thinks Kili looks ready to leap across the kitchen for Fili’s knife, he sighs, his shoulders rolling forward.  
  
“Fine,” he says.  
  
Fili nods and slices the fish just above the gills, pulling out handfuls of red, slick flesh.  
  
—  
  
It takes less than a week for them to be found out. Kili ducks into the fenced alley behind the pub to set out old kegs for collection and Fili tags along behind him, their fingers entwined. When Dwalin steps out for an empty crate he finds them sitting on the ground, Kili leaning back against Fili’s chest, his eyes towards the stars as his brother kisses constellations onto his neck.  
  
“I won’t say I understand it,” Dwalin says to him, leaning on the bar with folded arms. “But then again it isn’t any of my business.”  
  
“No,” Ori agrees. “It isn’t.”  
  
It is no longer a surprise to him when Dwalin fails to heed his own advice. “Were they like this back in Russia?” He says it like they share an affliction. Perhaps he’s more right than he knows.  
  
“They’ve always been like this.”  
  
“But Fili stayed there.”  
  
“Not by choice,” Ori says softly and Dwalin nods like he understands. He doesn’t, but for now, at least, his curiosity appears sated.  
  
The next evening sends Dwalin home early, leaving Kili to lock the doors. Once the chairs are up and the pub is cleared, Kili lays across the bar and blows cigarette smoke into the air. It’s an odd habit, one he picked up from the miners, but it suits him.  
  
“You need to be more careful,” Ori says.  
  
“About what?” Kili sighs a cloud of smoke.  
  
“The way you and Fili behave. You may not be brothers here, but that doesn’t mean this is - ” he pauses on the word _right_ and instead he says, “Accepted.”  
  
Kili pushes himself up onto his elbows, his cigarette dangling between his teeth. “Let Dwalin start rumours if he must, but I’m done hiding.”  
  
“You think it’s worth it?”  
  
“Worth it?” He snarls. Kili kicks his feet back over the edge and stands, taking circling, predatory steps towards him.  
  
“I lost everything. My family was massacred, I was banished to this fucking hellhole for the remainder of my miserable life. For nine months I have _rotted_.” He spits the word with such bitter imagery that Ori can almost see the decaying marrow beneath his skin. “Because I would burn Moscow to the ground to have my brother back. And now I do.” Kili hand is clutching at his heart, his fingers fisted in his own shirt. “I lost everything and by some miracle it was returned to me. I will not listen to you speak of caution. I will never let another person dictate how I touch him, especially not you.”  
  
“Kili!” They both turn to see Fili in the doorway. He looks like he has made an effort to scrub away the mess of sweat and dust that colours his skin, though he has achieved little. His blonde hair is still darkened with soot and his eyes are bright in contrast but Ori does not miss the man in uniform; he was not the man he fell in love with.  
  
Kili allows Fili to pull him into the back room, shutting the door behind them both. Their voices are muffled, and even with Ori’s ear to the wood he can barely make out Fili’s graveled speech.  
  
“You think he hasn’t suffered? He has lost his family and his home.” He pauses then, and Ori exhales. “He sacrificed them. He did this for your sake, he owed us nothing. He could have lived happily with his brothers for many years, and instead he chose to help me, out of love for you. And now, after everything, you offer him disrespect and contempt.”    
  
Fili is, as always, only half right.  
  
Kili’s response is inaudible, and Fili’s voice files down to a gentle murmur until Ori can no longer make out the words. It feels like hours before they emerge from the back room, Fili looking apologetic and Kili with red rimmed eyes.  
  
They walk home in silence, retreating into their bedroom while Ori arranges his sheets. Through the walls, he hears the distant sound of muffled crying and Fili’s voice in a soothing, monotone hum. “You carry far too much, my prince. Forgive and set it down to rest.”  
  
—  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says to him over breakfast. Fili is long gone, up with the sun and out before either of them woke. “You’ve done so much for us and I just - ”  
  
“You don’t have to explain,” Ori says. He has spent months filled with blind envy for the spaces between their entwined fingers, for their mingled breath. But now he is thankful. His life will never begin and end for another— not for his brothers or for Stalin, not even for a Durin. Ori can always rebuild, but Fili and Kili remain tied to the very same stones.    
  
“You’ve done so much for us,” he repeats.  
  
“You would’ve done the same for me,” he says, though he’s not sure that it’s the truth. He’d like to pretend it is, so they both finish breakfast without another word.     
  
—  
  
Ori spends his nights with Kili, locking up the bar and laughing themselves sick over vodka poured into scotch glasses. He sees little of Fili, most days. His free time is his brother's to claim, between the sheets or stretched across the sofa. But Saturdays are theirs to share. Kili works at the pub from dawn till dusk and Fili and Ori spend their time in relative silence, reading books on the lawns of memorials and grave yards, the only stretches of well kept grass for miles and miles.  
  
They lay side by side in the grass, taking turns reading out of a translation of Tolstoy’s _Resurrection_. The English pains his chest with its simplicity.  
  
“I’ve been nominated,” Fili says suddenly, as he passes the book to Ori. “For a position in the trade union. I’m not sure if I ought to accept.”  
  
“What position?”  
  
“The head officer for the eastern region.”  
  
“Oh,” Ori says, setting the book down. “But you’re foreign.”  
  
Fili is playing with strands of honey suckles, tying them in knots. “I think that worked in my favour. They want to prove that even immigrant labour won’t undermine the unions. A Russian in a position of influence may look good to bloc workers. And Bofur knows what I was in Moscow, he thinks I could be valuable.” He is silent then, his shoulders hunched as he continues to tie knot after knot until his fingers are stained with the smell.  
  
“Is this - are you asking me for advice?”  
  
Fili’s smile is small, barely there, and he nods. “You seem so surprised.”  
  
“Well, you don’t generally need it.”  
  
“No,” Fili answers, easily. “I’ve always needed it. You’ve just offered before I ever had the chance to ask.”  
  
Ori wants to kiss him, to press his hands to his cheekbones like he’s seen Kili do so many times, to hold him close and breathe him in. “You were made for this kind of thing,” he says instead. “Take the nomination. They won’t find a better candidate.”  
  
—  
  
They are dancing to the sound of a static ridden radio. The wicker furniture has been pushed up against the walls, and Fili and Kili dance with their palms brushing together, in the centre of their cramped sitting room. Ori sits to the side and watches, laughing at Fili’s scowling complaints about the quality of the American imported jazz.  
  
Kili reaches across the table to turn down the radio and instead begins to sing a few nonsense syllables to a tune that Ori knows but can’t put a name to. The look in Fili’s eyes speaks of a story he will never hear. He bows his head, smiling, his lashes low. Fili hums with him and they move in practiced perfection, barely touching but always close by.  
  
“Dance with us,” Kili offers, grinning down at him.  
  
“I never learned how,” he says. Kili doesn’t argue though Fili seems like he wants to. Before he can say a word Kili grabs his hands and swings him in an arching loop, laughing the whole way. He wonders if they used to dance together in their old flat, when the parties and events at the Kremlin were long over. He imagines they must have, their own little balls in the centre of the House on the Embankment.  
  
They continue dancing with the radio off, to the sound of their own voices, songs they learned as children, beautiful songs about autumn leaves and light.  
  
—  
  
“Do you love my brother?”  
  
Ori nearly laughs at how beautifully in sync they are, at how often Kili parrots Fili’s words without him ever knowing it. This time, he is not in a cellar with grief and anxiety weighing down the air. Instead he is pleasantly tipsy with Kili sprawled beside him on the floor of Dwalin’s pub.  
  
“Maybe a little bit,” he admits.  
  
“I thought so, when I first saw you together. Did you always love him? Did I just never see it before?”  
  
“No,” he traces the Russian alphabet in the air. It has been far too long since he has seen its letters. “I didn’t really know him until you left. Are you angry?”  
  
“Maybe a little bit.” But he is smiling when Ori tilts his head to look at him. “I guess I’m used to being the only one who doesn’t either fear or respect him.”  
  
“Well,” Ori begins. “Love and fear are not mutually exclusive.”  
  
“You have nothing to fear from us, Ori. You’re family now.”  
  
Family makes him think of Nori, fleeing for West Berlin, kept warm by the fire of his beliefs and Dori who walks the same streets home with his needle-pricked fingers and heavy knit scarves. Family makes him think of Fili, kissing a cross onto Kili’s chest, nipping the skin below his navel, whispering words Ori will never hear against his ribs.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re family.”    
  
—  
  
On Sundays, when the rest of the town dresses for church, Kili remains tucked into his brother’s side, staying in bed until the sun is high above their cramped little flat. Ori makes them tea with milk, the way Bofur taught him to, as he stumbles from their bedroom with mussed hair and a sleepy smile.  
  
“Good morning,” he says and Kili winks at him, cradling a mug between his palms. “Fili’s still asleep?”  
  
“I thought it best to leave him to it.” They listen to church bells ring in the distance as they lean against the countertop and drink their tea. He knows that Kili’s thoughts must be with Fili, beneath their sheets, but Ori is thinking of Moscow. He remembers hearing bells on Sundays for a few short years of his childhood, when the Orthodox churches still dared to open to their doors.  
  
“Did you try going to services here?” He asks, suddenly. There is a small Protestant parish just a few blocks away, a wooden whitewashed hall which sits in such grand contrast to the cathedrals of Moscow.  
  
“For my first few months,” he admits. “I’d go to pray.”  
  
“Why did you stop?” He’s always wondered about Kili’s faith, the one thing he never shared with his brother.  
  
“I didn’t think it was working.” Kili’s eyes fall on the closed bedroom door.  
  
“And now?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he says, but Ori thinks he does.  
  
“No time?” He offers instead.  
  
“Yeah,” Kili says, taking a sip from his mug. “Something like that.”  
  
—  
  
The pub is empty for all but Bofur’s cousin, tucked away in the corner, tinkering with a wooden carving in the shape of an eagle. Their handful of regulars have come and gone, so Ori sits at the bar while Kili leans across it, towel tossed over his shoulder.  
  
Sometimes, when they’re alone, they talk about Moscow. They remember the winters, proper winters, when the air hurts to breathe, like ice getting caught in their lungs. They complain about rickety bridges and the smell of petrol and they sigh over memories of kasha with cream.  
  
“What’re you on about?” Dwalin asks, leaning at Kili’s side.  
  
“Russia,” Ori tells him. He’s more or less warmed up to the man, though it is still very much a work in progress.  
  
“You miss it?” He asks.  
  
“Every day.” Like a constant, pinched nerve in his spine, Moscow lingers. But Dwalin has never left the black air of Aberdeen. He knows every crack and crevice of the house he was born in, the very same house he will die in, inevitably, when his time comes. Dwalin has no frame of reference for their shared pain, but he looks like he’s trying.  
  
“What do you miss about it?” He asks.  
  
“The opera,” Kili answers, and the second the words slip from his mouth, he looks away, flushed with embarrassment. Ori has never seen so much as a play, but he imagines Kili as a child in the seats of the Bolshoi, and thinks it must have been beautiful.  
  
“Well I certainly don’t understand that,” Dwalin says, giving him a thump on his back.  
  
“Food, too,” Kili amends. “Smells, sometimes, it’s all little things. Tea with lemon.”  
  
“Cabbage rolls,” Ori adds. Kili’s smile breaks his heart.  
  
“In the summers, the sun rises at four in the morning,” he says. “We would use it as an excuse to wake at five when we were young. Uncle hated it.”  
  
“Ice skating in Gorky Park.” It wasn’t the pond he would skate on, but the sidewalks. For many years there were no drainage systems to speak of and in the winter the pavement would flood and freeze over, creating perfect flat swaths of ice. Nori would bring him in the afternoons, when Dori was busy with work, and make him promise not to tell. He never did.  
  
“Rain,” Kili says and Ori nods, mouth against the rim of his glass, because he knows exactly what he means.  
  
“Rain,” Ori agrees.    
  
They both look up when the door swings open and Fili’s heavy footsteps leave mud tracked on the floor.  
  
“We just cleaned that,” Dwalin says, but he is being well and truly ignored in favour of Kili who is already hopping over the bar to greet his brother. Kili hooks one hand around the nape of his neck while he wipes smudges of coal dust out from under his eyes with the other.  
  
Fili looks exhausted but he smiles nonetheless, a genuine quirk of his lips to match Kili’s open mouthed grin. When they have finally counted each other’s pulses with quick fingers, when their reassurances are made, they return to the bar. Fili slips onto the stool beside Ori and Kili stands behind them, his arms flung wide around both of their shoulders.  
   
Kili is saying something loud and vaguely inappropriate, while Dwalin threatens him with cleaning duty and Fili laughs silently at his side.  
  
It’s certainly not Moscow, he thinks. But it might be enough.


End file.
